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Mykolaiv mayor keeps the water flowing, even in war-torn Ukraine

The city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, on the Black Sea. (Photo: Mykolaiv City Council)

8 Apr 2025

Some local cities can’t supply water in peacetime. Oleksandr Syenkevych, mayor of Ukraine’s Mykolaiv, is doing it in the middle of a war.

Oleksandr Syenkevych, mayor of the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, has managed to supply water to his people and keep other essential services running even through three years of brutal warfare with Russia. This is an achievement certain other cities closer to home, which shall remain nameless, cannot match even in peacetime.

The city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, on the Black Sea. (Photo: Mykolaiv City Council)

How is that possible? The answer lies in dedication, ingenuity and fighting corruption. That, in turn, also has much to do with Ukraine’s having decentralised considerable power from the national government to the cities.

Syenkevych was in Cape Town recently to attend an international conference on water reclamation and reuse. He was elected mayor of Mykolaiv in 2015 and was leading the city when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Mykolaiv, Ukraine’s second-largest port city, lies on the shores of the Black Sea in southern Ukraine, just 60km northwest of the city of Kherson, where Ukraine’s largest river, the Dnieper, discharges into the Black Sea. It is now on the frontline.

The Russians captured Kherson in just six days in February 2022 and were clearly intent on marching on to Odesa, Ukraine’s main port, to the west. But first they had to take Mykolaiv, which they didn’t.

“Our city was the city that stopped [the] Russian invasion in southern Ukraine,” says Syenkevych. “We were never occupied.”

Three days to prepare

The Russians attacked Mykolaiv three days after they took Kherson.

“We had three days to prepare for the invasion. They tried to attack the city … they almost entered the city.”

Mykolaiv was in effect a garrison town. After Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, the frontline with Russia had abruptly contracted from 400km away to just 150km away. So, Ukraine stationed many troops in Mykolaiv. When Russia attacked, 11 different military organisations were based in Mykolaiv at brigade level, Syenkevych said. This included good artillery.

Apparently unaware, the Russians also threw too small a force at Mykolaiv.

Also, Mykolaiv held the line, less obviously, because of the devolution of political power. Under the 2015 constitution, considerable power, autonomy and resources, including taxing powers, had been devolved from the central government to local governments.

This allowed Mykolaiv to manage its defences in the crucial first days of the war while the national government in Kyiv was preoccupied with the overall defence of the country.

Syenkevych quickly mobilised the city’s forces. Municipal excavators dug trenches and constructed defensive fortifications outside the city, using the city’s concrete plant and tramlines for tank traps.

“We became an engineering division of our army.”

They stopped the Russians and threw them back to Kherson on the near bank of the Dnieper River, which Russia occupied for more than eight months until Ukraine recaptured and liberated the city on 11 November 2022, driving the Russians back over the Dnieper River.

On 24 March 2022, a month after the invasion began, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proclaimed Mykolaiv as a “Hero City of Ukraine” along with Bucha and Irpin in Kyiv province and Okhtyrka in Sumy province, for resisting or expelling Russian forces.

Water headaches

But even though Mykolaiv had repelled the invaders, major problems remained especially with water. Though Mykolaiv sits at the confluence of two rivers, the Southern Bukh and Inhul, they are both brackish because of the influx of salt water from the Black Sea.

This was why Mykolaiv had been pumping fresh water from the Dnieper River near Kherson through 73km of pipes.

On 12 April, the Russians realised this and destroyed the pipes.

water main russian attack A water main that was destroyed in a Russian attack in April 2022 had been used to deliver potable water for 500,000 residents. (Photo: Mykolaiv City Council)

syenkevyh damaged water pipes Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Syenkevych (right) inspects the replacement of damaged water pipes. (Photo: Mykolaiv City Council)

New pipes are laid to reduce water losses. (Photo: Mykolaiv City Council)

“Since then, our city doesn’t have drinking water in our pipes,” the mayor said.

He ordered more than 250 boreholes to be drilled around the city. But that was not enough water, especially for sewage. After a month, the city found a way to pump water from one of its brackish rivers. This “technical water”, as he calls it, was ok for showering or washing the dishes, but was too salty to drink.

Residents still have to collect their drinking water from the borehole. When there is diesel for the pumps, the city provides water 12 hours a day. Even without diesel, solar panels and batteries keep the water flowing for at least six hours a day.

water points After Russian attacks on urban critical water infrastructure, residents of the city of Mykolaiv have to use water distribution points from boreholes around the city to get fresh potable water every day. (Photo: Mykolaiv City Council)

Syenkevych said donor countries, especially Denmark, had greatly helped Mykolaiv in constructing its water distribution system – and generally in defending itself, including by supplying such basics as plywood to cover windows to protect residents from rocket blasts.

“Denmark is a unique partner of Ukraine, and first of all, of Mykolaiv … Denmark has adopted us.”

Syenkevych notes that Russia has claimed that most of the aid to Ukraine is stolen. He insists that Mykolaiv, at least, has not spent a cent of donors’ money.

“If we need something like plywood, pumps, pipes, anything, we ask them to procure it… and we will install it and we will use it.”

That way, Mykolaiv handles no cash.

Mykolaiv was also the first city in Ukraine to create a website where it publicly reports in detail on all the help it gets.

Nationally, Ukraine also has Prozorro (meaning transparent), a fully electronic public procurement platform that ensures open access to all the information about public tenders.

This means the specifications for any product or service are public. This helps, for instance, to prevent government officials from tailoring their tenders to suit favoured contractors.

Protective measures

He noted that since the start of the invasion, 183 people had died from Russian missiles and shells in Mykolaiv. He attributed this relatively low number to the protective measures put in place, but also to the advice he gave city residents at the start, to leave the city. The population shrank from about half a million to a low point of 230,000 in the summer of 2022.

When a rocket hit a five-storey building and destroyed two of its four towers, say 40 apartments, for example, only four people died because most apartments were empty.

He also noted that despite Russia’s propaganda that it invaded Ukraine to protect Russian-speaking people, every one of the Mykolaiv residents killed by Russian rockets was Russian-speaking.

Syenkevych said that while Russian troops continued to bombard Kherson heavily from their positions just across the river from the city, Mykolaiv was now being attacked on average by only one Iranian drone a month. He said this was because Mykolaiv was no longer interesting to Russia, in part because Ukraine’s troops had moved forward to Kherson and all the military targets were destroyed in 2022-2023.

The Russians are, however, still targeting heating plants in the winter or electricity substations in summer, trying to prevent residents from keeping warm in winter and having their food refrigerated in summer.

“So they want to create a panic. And for people to start yelling like, we want peace at any price.”

Devolution meant political autonomy too. Syenkevych said he didn’t vote for Zelensky when he was elected in 2019. He voted for the then incumbent president Petro Poroshenko because Ukraine was already at war with Russia and he didn’t feel power should be handed over to “some fresh guy” – ie Zelensky, who was then a 41-year-old comedian.

He nonetheless now stands fully behind Zelensky, also fully backing his decision not to hold presidential elections – which were otherwise due last year – during a state of martial law, which is forbidden by law. Syenkevych says proper elections would be impossible with the country at war, not least because many people would not risk their lives to vote.

“We trust President Zelensky… and Parliament … they do the legislation that we need.”

Trump insult

This is why he completely rejected US President Donald Trump’s insult that Zelensky was a “dictator – without elections” and was appalled at the insulting way Trump and his vice-president JD Vance treated Zelensky in their recent public meeting in the White House, where he said Zelensky was treated not as a president, but “like some guy from the street”.

He said Ukrainians had really appreciated US military help in conducting the war and their development aid.

“But you cannot resolve any questions about Ukraine without Ukraine,” he said, referring to Trump’s decision to negotiate directly with Russia, leaving out Ukraine.

“Only Ukrainian people, in a democratic way, can make these decisions.”

Syenkevych said that whatever personal views Trump might hold about Ukraine, he should honour America’s obligations as a country, notably the Budapest Memorandum, which it signed with the UK and Russia in 1994, to guarantee Ukraine’s security in exchange for Ukraine surrendering its nuclear arsenal.

“Then one of these guarantors decided to invade the country. So the two others have to protect us.”

To Trump’s complaint that the US was spending so much on Ukraine – and getting nothing back – he retorted that the US was renovating its arsenal by giving old stock to Ukraine and replacing it with new stock, which had been boosting US military production companies. Also, by proving its weapons on the modern Ukrainian battlefield, the US was winning many new customers.

‘Western shield’

Meanwhile, Ukraine was losing its equipment and infrastructure “and our best asset, our people” to protect European and Western values against the “new Nazism” of Russia.

“Ukraine is now a shield between these two worlds.”

He noted that Polish President Donald Tusk had recently said it was ridiculous that 500 million Europeans asked 350 million Americans to protect them from 140 million Russians.

He nevertheless insisted that Russia would never defeat Ukraine, that Ukraine would never be part of Russia. Nor Mykolaiv.

“We defended our city and our territory once, and we will be able to do it again, many times. Until Putin dies. He is an old guy, so we will live longer. And I think that Russia will be destroyed from the inside. Like all the big empires.”

Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, on the Black Sea, can no longer operate as a port, moving produce by truck to Odesa and other ports. (Photo: Mykolaiv City Council)

Mykolaiv can sadly no longer directly ship the grain and sunflower oil, soya oil and fertiliser and other products it was exporting before the war because its sea lanes are now within range of Russian artillery on the far bank of the Dnieper.

Instead, it has become a dry port, Syenkevych says. It stores agricultural produce during the harvest season, including large volumes of sunflower and soya oil in its many tanks. This is transported by truck to Odesa and other ports to be shipped to international markets. DM

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