MOSCHUN, Ukraine (AP) — Standing amid the wreckage of his home, Vadym Zherdetsky shows photos on his phone of how it once looked: handsome rooms, a hand-carved wooden bed and a chest of drawers he intended to leave to his grandchildren.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, two missiles struck the house in the tiny village of Moschun on the outskirts of the capital, ripping off the roof and nearly killing four family members. The town was recaptured from Russian forces in April, but Zherdetsky’s house, like many others in the Kyiv region, remains in ruins.

“Everything changed. Our lives changed,” the 51-year-old said, wiping away tears. “Thank God it was only property, and we are alive and healthy. … I don’t know where our kids and grandkids will live. I don’t know anything.”

More than six months after Russian forces retreated from the towns around Kyiv, residents of those communities are still struggling to rebuild their lives. An estimated 1 million people — half the number who fled the region — have returned, according to local authorities. But many no longer have jobs, cannot afford to fix their houses and say they need more assistance.

Nearly $350 billion is needed for reconstruction across the war-ravaged country, and that amount is expected to grow, according to a report issued in September by Ukraine’s government, the European Commission and the World Bank.

Burdened with the fighting and frequent Russian attacks on the country’s power system, the Ukrainian government strains to carry out the most urgent repairs to civilian residences. This month it plans to send 1,000 crews to do as much work as possible before winter, including fixing 117 high-rise buildings in the Kyiv region, the area’s military administration said.

People submit photos of their destroyed homes to a government app to receive compensation. However, large-scale reconstruction — such as the $300,000 that Zherdetsky estimates is needed to repair his house — has yet to begin.

Moschun, with a population of about 1,000, was hit hard at the start of the war. Approximately 37 people were killed and 160 homes destroyed, residents say. The town was occupied by Russian troops for nearly six weeks.

Walking through the debris, Zherdetsky nostalgically points to the carefully constructed archways he designed to allow two of his grandchildren to ride through on their scooters at the same time, he said.

He and his wife have moved to a cramped space above a convenience store they own on the edge of town. He’s now earning about 10 times less than he did before Russia’s invasion because prices have spiked and people don’t have money to spend, he said. The drop in income has prevented him from buying building materials and warm clothes ahead of winter, he said.

Reconstruction is challenging, especially since 60% of the country’s budget is allocated for the war, Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the Kyiv region military administration, told The Associated Press.

“The Kyiv region is bombarded with missiles and drones … We understand that everything is not happening as quickly as we would like, but 28,000 objects were damaged in the region. We will rebuild them all,” said Kuleba, who said housing is a priority.

Moscow is targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to drive the nation into the cold of the impending winter. Since early October, it has destroyed approximately 40% of the country’s energy system, forcing Ukraine to impose rolling blackouts while racing to stabilize the grid.

The strikes drew a warning from the mayor of Kyiv, who said that residents should be prepared for the worst this winter, including the threat of having having no electricity, water or heat.

Worried that the energy system will not hold, the government is urging Ukrainians who fled the country not to return until after winter, said Iryna Vereshchuk, the minister for the reintegration of the Russian-occupied territories.

Analysts warn that displaced people should be cautious about going back to areas around Kyiv that have been regained by Ukraine because some are not yet fully secure, especially with Russia’s military buildup in neighboring Belarus, which poses a risk of a renewed invasion from the north.

In the quest for assistance, Ukraine “still struggles to mobilize donors for rapid rebuilding and necessary security measures,” said Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine forum at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

Some aid groups are trying to help those who have returned. The International Committee of the Red Cross gave two generators to help Moschun cope with power cuts, as well as insulation to help prepare buildings for the fast-approaching cold, said Achille Despres, committee spokesman in Ukraine. In July, other organizations provided some 60 prefabricated houses for those without shelter.

Yet Moschun locals worry that even with heaters, those temporary houses won’t be warm enough come winter. Many say they feel abandoned.

“It’s like a dead city,” said Nataliya Perekhrestenko, the deputy administrator of Moschun. “We feel like no one cares about us.”

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IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — Hand on heart, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy watched his country’s flag rise Wednesday above the recaptured city of Izium, making a rare foray outside the capital that highlights Moscow’s embarrassing retreat from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Russian forces left the war-scarred city last week as Kyiv’s soldiers pressed a stunning advance that has reclaimed large swaths of territory in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.

As Zelenskyy looked on and sang the national anthem, the Ukrainian flag was raised in front of the burned-out city hall. After almost six months under Russian occupation, Izium was left largely devastated, with apartment buildings blackened by fire and pockmarked by artillery strikes.

A gaping hole and piles of rubble stood where one building had collapsed.

“The view is very shocking, but it is not shocking for me,” Zelenskyy told journalists, “because we began to see the same pictures from Bucha, from the first de-occupied territories … the same destroyed buildings, killed people.”

Bucha is a small city on Kyiv’s outskirts from which Russian troops withdrew in March. In the aftermath, Ukrainian authorities discovered the bodies of hundreds of civilians dumped in streets, yards and mass graves. Many bore signs of torture.

Prosecutors said they so far have found six bodies with traces of torture in recently retaken Kharkiv region villages. The head of the Kharkiv prosecutor’s office, Oleksandr Filchakov, said bodies were found in Hrakove and Zaliznyche, villages around 60 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Kharkiv city.

“We have a terrible picture of what the occupiers did. … Such cities as Balakliia, Izium, are standing in the same row as Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin,” said Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, listing places where the Ukrainians have alleged Russian forces committed atrocities.

Local authorities have made similar claims in other areas Russia previously held, but it was not immediately possible to verify their information. They have not yet provided evidence of potential atrocities on the scale described in Bucha, where the number and conditions of civilian casualties prompted international demands to press war crimes charges against Russian officials.

Moscow’s recent rout in northeastern Ukraine was its largest military defeat since Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv area months ago. On the northern outskirts of Izium, the remains of Russian tanks and vehicles lay shattered along a road.

As Zelenskyy visited, his forces pressed their counteroffensive, de-mined retaken ground and investigated possible war crimes. He said that “life comes back” as Ukrainian soldiers return to previously occupied villages.

The Ukrainian governor of the eastern Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said Ukrainian soldiers were preparing to retake the area, which borders the Kharkiv region and was has been mostly under Russian control since July. Intense shelling of Ukrainian forces continued, he said.

Haidai told The Associated Press that Ukrainian troops were flying Ukrainian flags in the cities of Svatove and Starobilsk.

But in Kreminna, another city where Ukrainians raised their flag, Russians returned Wednesday and “tore down the (Ukrainian) flags and are demonstrably showing that they’re there,” Haidai said.

A Russia-allied separatist military leader confirmed the Ukrainian advance on the Luhansk region. Andrei Marochko, a local militia officer, said on Russian TV that the situation was “really difficult.”

“In some places, the contact line has come very close to the borders of the Luhansk People’s Republic,” Marochko said, referring to the independent state the separatists declared eight years ago.

The counteroffensive has left more weapons in Ukrainian hands.

Russian forces likely left behind dozens of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other heavy weaponry as they fled Ukraine’s advance in the east, a Ukrainian think tank said Wednesday. The Center for Defense Strategies said one Russian unit fleeing the Izium area left behind more than three dozen T-80 tanks and about as many infantry fighting vehicles. Another unit left 47 tanks and 27 armored vehicles, it said.

The center said Russian forces tried to destroy some of the abandoned vehicles through artillery strikes as they fell back. Typically, armed forces ruin equipment left behind so their opponent can’t use it. However, the chaos of the Russian withdrawal apparently forced them to abandon untouched ammunition and weapons.

With the recent Ukrainian gains, a new front line has emerged along the Oskil River, which largely traces the Kharkiv region’s eastern edge, a Washington-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said Wednesday.

“Russian troops are unlikely to be strong enough to prevent further Ukrainian advances along the entire Oskil River because they do not appear to be receiving reinforcements, and Ukrainian troops will likely be able to exploit this weakness to resume the counteroffensive across the Oskil if they choose,” the institute said.

In other areas, Russia continued its attacks, causing more casualties in a war that has dragged on for nearly seven months.

Two people were killed and three wounded after Russia attacked Mykolaiv with S-300 missiles overnight, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said.

The Nikopol area, across a river from the shutdown Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, was shelled three times during the night, with no injuries immediately reported, regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

Fighting also raged in the eastern Donetsk region, where shelling killed five civilians and wounded 16. Together, Luhansk and Donetsk make up the Donbas, an industrial area that Moscow set out to capture following an unsuccessful attempt to invade Kyiv.

Russian troops are targeting critical infrastructure. Eight cruise missiles aimed at water equipment — possibly a dam on the Inhulets River or a reservoir — hit Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, a city 150 kms (93 miles) southwest of Dnipro, the deputy head of the president’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, reported on his Telegram channel. Zelenskyy said the strikes appeared to be an attempt to flood the city. Video posted online showed elevated water levels on the Inhulets and flooded city streets, and evacuations of residents were suggested.

U.S. President Joe Biden observed Wednesday that Ukrainian forces have made “significant progress” in recent days but added, “I think it’s going to be a long haul.”

While criticism of the invasion seems to be increasing in Russia, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Unfortunately, I cannot tell you that the realization has grown over there by now that this was a mistake to start this war.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that he had spoken with Putin about exporting Russian fertilizer through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to address a famine threat. The U.N. chief said at a news conference in New York that high prices for fertilizer have reduced the planting of crops, making it critical to increase Russian exports of ammonia — a key fertilizer ingredient — by shipping it through Black Sea ports now used to transport grain from Ukraine.

Western military and economic support has allowed Ukraine to keep fighting since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and the Ukrainian government received more assistance Wednesday.

An international group of creditors, including the U.S., finalized a deal to suspend Ukraine’s debt service through the end of 2023, helping the country ease liquidity pressures and increase social, health and economic spending.

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