The new fundraising appeal comes from a certain “fatigue” among donors, as the Ukrainian Finance Minister put it. Yaroslava Gres, United24’s chief coordinator, says overcoming fatigue is his mission. “We ask ourselves: what will motivate them to continue to stand with Ukraine?” he tells WIRED.
Gres says he hopes that by showing potential donors the homes they will help rebuild, and hearing from the people who want to return home, the support will be inspired to keep coming. “Storytelling gives our donors the opportunity to feel complicity with the specific people they support, but also with the specific causes they help rebuild,” he says.
The 3D renderings come via LUN, a Ukrainian real estate website that collaborated with United24 on the project. The company sent photographers equipped with drones to buildings across the country. The images are used to create a digital replica of a damaged building. From there, the architects plan the reconstruction of the building.
“We have been working on digitalizing the future for years, modeling how cities can develop and how new buildings can be built,” a LUN spokesperson told WIRED. “It was hard to see destruction instead; to look at hundreds of photos of the damage done and show everything as it is.”
Video: United24
These 3D views will also be made available via augmented reality, allowing users to view the buildings through their phone camera or AR headset.
The logistics behind rebuilding Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure will be enormous and complicated. In a presentation in May, Maksym Smilianets – co-owner of Ukrainian internet service provider Viner – highlighted the scale of the problem they face in rebuilding and reconnecting the country. The airstrikes and shelling caused massive damage to telecommunications infrastructure, he explained. Hundreds of kilometers of fiber optic cable have already been laid to repair the destruction.
In areas currently under Russian control, the invading army quickly switched connections to the Moscow-controlled Internet. “They rebuilt the connections and stole our equipment,” Smilianets’ presentation said. In liberated parts of Ukraine, repair crews found booby traps in telecommunications infrastructure, he said. “They have done everything they can to achieve total decoupling.”
Even as ISPs like Smilianets’ Viner work to rebuild the shared infrastructure of Ukraine, once one of the best-connected countries in Europe, a huge amount of work will be needed to reconnect every damaged house and apartment building across the country . That ‘last kilometer’ will probably require hundreds of kilometers of additional fiber optic cable.
“No one has the power to cleanse the depths of human nature from the evil that sometimes rises to the surface and destroys and kills,” Ukrainian President Voldomyr Zelensky told the Ukraine Recovery Conference held in London last June. “But you and I, and in this moment, are able to protect life and overcome the ruins.”