Virtually Reviving Ukraine’s Bombed Buildings

documents and works of art. Now, with the help of technology like advanced digital modeling, Ukrainians are working to document what's been destroyed and preserve what can be salvage for future generations. In a moment, I speak with an architect in Kiev who's doing this. He's creating three D visual models of bombed Ukrainian cultural sites. But first, Bloomberg Senior International Affairs reporter Mark Champion joins me from London to

help us makes sense of where the war is heading. Mark, You've traveled around Ukraine several times this year reporting on the war. Russia recently had yet another big setback when Ukraine's military took back the city of Kersan in the south, and in the months before that, Russia had resorting increasing its long range missile attacks because its troops weren't gaining ground. So clear the war isn't going well for Putin. How should we think about Russia's strategy in Ukraine right now? Really,

they seem to have a dual purpose here. One and probably the main one, is to try and persuade the West, in particular that this has to stop, and to negotiate some sort of ceasefire and stop the war, which the Russians essentially aren't losing, slowly but losing. A second goal is really to punish and to make it clear to the Ukrainians that unless they come to some kind of agreement with the Russians, the punishment will be severe. And

Russia has the capacity to just continued doing that. And yet it doesn't seem like either of those things is going to happen. The West seems more resolved than ever to help Ukraine, and certainly the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian army and the government don't show any signs of backing down. I think that's absolutely right, and really the story of this war is a series of massive miscalculations by the Russians,

by Putin, himself. Ukraine's forces are continuing a rapid advance in the Hockey of region, exploiting an extraordinary collapse of Russian defenses. The Kremlin now plans to hold referendums in Ukrainian territories occupied by its troops. President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization and pledge to annex the territories his forces have already occupied in Ukraine. You've traveled around Ukraine. What do you see when you speak to people? What

do they tell you? You know, you have to generalize, but I would say that it's pretty consistent that there is number one just anger, an absolute fury at what Russia is inflicting on Ukraine. And you have to remember that this was not an anti Russian country before two thousand and fourteen. It became increasingly so after two thousand and fourteen, when Russia and next Crimea and began an insurgency in the eastern Dompass region. Violence in Ukraine shifting

to Crimea. Gunmen took over parliament and other government buildings overnight, they raised the Russian flag. It's estimated there about a hundred twenty gunmen. Russia has a naval based in the region were putin the President of Russia supporting a request from Crimea to join the countries. But since this war, it is very difficult to find even among Russian speakers in towns like you know, Odessa, Mikliath and so on, which are towns that have long historical ties and familial

ties with Russia. It's hard to find people with anything good to say about Russia. Now. The second thing to say would be that something that has changed in the last few months and since the campaign, when the Ukrainians had this very successful counter offensive up in the Harkeet region, and since then, there's a belief that actually the Ukrainians

can will win. I believe among the people, yes, absolutely, among the people, among the military, in the government, there is a very very profound belief that they well win. And they also feel that, you know, they do have the support of the West, which has all these modern weapons. President Biden says the US will give Ukraine as much as six hundred million dollars in additional weapons and ammunition.

The high mars, these long range pieces of artillery that have allowed the Ukrainians to strike at logistics supply lines far behind the front lines of the Russians. These have proved incredibly strategically important but also psychologically because they've given Ukrainians belief that even if they don't have a tenth of the artillery pieces, that the Russians have, what they have because it's modern, because it's Western and so on, will enable them to do what they need to do

and to prevail. And this is very important because so long as you they believe that they can win, the incentive to sit down and negotiate a piece with Russians still occupying about twenty of the country is close to zero. Is that believe well founded? Will Russia eventually back down if they're not able to gain more ground? Is that

seem realistic? Yes? There are two separate questions here. One is whether the Ukrainians can continue to push the Russians back on the battlefield in a conventional war that we're now engaged in, and the answer that is probably yes. It will be slow, difficult, but probably yes. The second question is whether the Russians will back down, And we have to remember that they are a massive nuclear power, and that they have a lot of other kinds of resources,

and that this can get very ugly. This is one of the reasons why it feels like a more dangerous period in the war, and that I suppose has a lot to do with Vladimir Putin himself and how much he personally has invested his own credibility, the future and credibility of Russia in this invasion. The stakes for him are enormous. He began this war in in order to just consolidate his legacy, and he's talked about it specifically openly in terms of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great

and the gathering, the regathering of Russian lands. Very important for him to talk about the regathering. So the implication is that we're just taking back what's ours, setting it out in those kind of very kind of grand terms,

historical terms, this is my place in history. And then to be defeated and to be pushed back, to have lost tens of thousands of your own soldiers, to have destroyed the relationship with, you know, the most important neighbor that Russia has, you know, in terms of the former Soviet Union Ukraine, these would be extraordinary defeats for him. Politically, it could be very difficult for him to survive it.

You lived and worked in Moscow for years do you have a sense of how much support Putent has from the Russian people. He's very good at making people fear him, but do they believe in this Guys, he has been very popular. I don't feel like I really have my

finger on the pulse of Russian thought today. But what I would say is that even when I lived there in the nineties, when the sort of tide of opinion was very pro western, I could count on less than one hand the number of Russians I knew who thought the Ukraine as a country. So this runs deep the idea that Ukraine is not a real country. It's been taught in history classes and so on for Russians in over many, many decades, and that kind of created an

open door for Putting too push for many people. They really have responded quite well, after all, the humiliation of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the ninety nineties, the poverty and so on, to the idea that not only did they re establish the oil industry, re established the economy, start doing better, but also they're becoming, you know, re establishing themselves as a great path And Russians have a very strong idea of the state and of the

importance of the state, and of the importance of the state is a great power. If he got this right, if he had succeeded, he would have made his place in Russian history and it would have been extremely popular, just as the annexation of Crimea was incredibly popular back in two thousand and fourteen. Mark later in this episode, we're going to be talking about how Russia's bombing of cultural sites has done great damage to centuries worth of

Ukrainian history and artwork and literature. In the beginning of the war, it seemed like the goal of Russia was to conquer Ukraine, to take it over, as they try to do in to sort of finish that job. Is it fair enough to say that in part there is also a goal to sort of destroy Ukraine as a country, as a people, as a culture. I think that is probably right. I mean, we can only really speculate as to what the motives are, but that's what it looks like.

It looks punitive, and it looks like the message that's being sent is that we may not be able to win, but you cannot. Even if Russia is not able to conquer Ukraine and to control it, it can destroy Ukraine asn't prevent it becoming the Ukrainian nation that it's. You know, Russia has encouraged it to become, and they can destroy that identity. They can try and destroy its culture, They can try and destroy the cities, make them unlivable, make

the economy unworkable. Basically say to the Ukrainians, you know, even if we can't conquer you, you're gonna have to come to some kind of arrangement with us, because we will simply grind you into the ground and there will be no nice future for Ukraine as a prosperous European Union state. That I think is the message that the Russians are are sending. But as I say, that's largely inference. Given all of this, what do you see when you look ahead six months a year from now, which Russian

is this word likely to take? If you're able to tell at all, None of us know, of course. The only thing I can say is that, you know, my best analysis in this very moment would be that we will still be at war in six months time. It will be extremely nasty, will continue to be extremely nasty. The Russians will not give up, The Ukrainians will not give up the huge, huge variable. There is the question of some kind of mass destruction event, some event that

changes the game and forces some alteration of path. It's very unpredictable as to exactly what will happen at what moment and you know where that final moment of near collision comes or collision. Mark Champion, thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you. After the break, how one Ukrainian architect is using technology to digitally recreate destroyed buildings. After Russia targeted cultural sites across Ukraine, people there began

documenting the destruction. In part it was so they could say what they could, but also as evidence of what Russia had done. One of the people doing this is Sergei Ravenco is an architect who specializes in building three D virtual models. He spoke to me recently from his office in Kiev, Ukraine's capital circuit. Before we talk about your project to protect and catalog the destruction of Ukraine heritage sites, I just wanted to ask you what is life like now in Kiev. Our own interview here this

morning was delayed because there was a power outage. What is daily life like in Ukraine's capital right now? It's quite crazy right now. It's a bit disturbing. With electricity cuts and old blackouts. It is not stable right now. You never know when the electric steel cut or when it goes up. And so you have traveled around the country visiting cities and towns where Russian bombs and missiles have destroyed buildings, museums and schools other places, and you

have seen this destruction around the country. I think the war I was in the Kiva Blast, all the Kiva blast. I have traveled all the places that the Russian forces were staying and trying to capture. In the copy these places her Key area, torn Area and the Kiev area as well. I want to ask you about one site in particular where you came and documented destruction, and that's in the city of Ivan, Kiev, about seventy kilometers north of Kiev, that's about forty three miles and in that

town there was a museum of local lore. Can you describe what that place was and what happened to it? In Vantia they have the Local Lore Museum, which have also the picture of famous Ukrainian painter Maria Primachenko. She have the very unique style and very impressive pictures. This museum was really burned out and damaged. So we also managed to have the video recorded the exact moment of

the missile hitting the building and the fire starts. The Russian army started to shell the town and two shells hit the Museum of Local Lore and just burned it down. Yeah, you're right. So as we come to this is museum, we heard the stories from the locals and from the

director herself about the shells. So no other places were damaged or burned, but only the museum, right, and what was destroyed along with the building, the team of the museum they managed to save all the pictures during the fire, so they just get into the building through the windows and save all the pictures. They actually took them and they hid them. Is that right. Yeah, one of the missiles had the roof goes through the building and start

the fire. It was not that obvious that the fire started, but after quite a while they saw the fire and they decided to just go through the windows and save at least they half on there. But they managed to save the all the pictures. They took the pictures out and then they decided to hide the pictures so that Russian troops could not find them. Yeah, yeah, they are really worried about the heritage and the cultural objects. So then you came some time later, you saw the destruction,

and then what did you do to document it? Can you describe what it is that you do? My method is to use a photography tree technique to document or to reconstruct the treaty model of exact scene. So we are just using the photo camera. I just go through all the building and repeat all the sites with my camera. And so what you do is you go into the building and you take thousands of photographs one after the

next to try to document the entire building. You're right, So basically you've taken as much photos as you can, but repeating all the shapes of the building. Imagine if you have the square building right like a cube. So basically you have to repeat all the sides, all the five sides with the roof facing it with the camera.

As you go through all these sites, you have to at least overlay the next shoot with the before one you take it at least like thirty or have to be included in the next shot before you do the one. So you're taking all of these overlapping photographs that when you then later put them together in computer software, you're able to reconstruct the image of the building. Yeah, you're total right. Also using the software to stitch all the

photos together and reconstructed in the treaty model. Once we get the reconstructed treet model through the all of the photos, we can manage to you this model and the viewer can see all the destructions and all the details as though you're actually walking through the building. You can do that on the screen, yeah right, And if you were with the laptop or even smartphone, can view it and

see all the scale of the treaty model. When you're making these three D virtual models of destroyed buildings, do people in the local community help you do this? Is this something that becomes something that people participate in. They helped us with the all the stories. For example, the video they showed us the exact moment of the missile hit. It was really shocking and you really could also use

that as the evidence for investigation. What could people in the town tell you about the Museum of local lore before it was destroyed? It really was important for a community. It was like the local travel spot and the one key was the hometown for Maria Primichenko for a long time. This is the artist you described to His paintings were in the museum. Yeah, yeah, it is really the famous one,

not only in Ukraine but also internationally. I believe there's some quote that because you have about Maria Primachenko, he was impressed by her paintings and yeah, this was like the really important spot for tourists and for our culture. If we lost that, that would be quite a big loss on the cultural side. Do you hope that your models and your documentation of the destruction in Ukraine will

one day help hold Russia accountable for what they've done. Definitely, I can't reveal all the plans or the things that happened, but I'm working on the evidence base to transfer it for a special force or at least the investigation cases to use the treaty module as the evidence. Why as an evidence because all the photos that you've taken, you're taken from the different angles, but the exact spot, So basically you can't claim that it's never happened, or it's

like fabula or you created by yourself. It created through all the sousands whole photos that you've taken. So this is like obvious evidence. Sergey Rabenko, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for Hermie. You heard Sergey say a minute ago that Pablo Pakaso praised Maria Primachenko, the Ukrainian artist. I googled that after we talked,

and here is what Picasso said quote. I bowed down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian After the break, how Ukrainians are using the kinds of models that Sergey Ravenko was describing just now to preserve what they can for future generations. I'm joining out by my colleagues Marie Patino and Rachel Dondal, their data and graphics journalists in

New York. Marie and Rachel, you've put together this compelling story for Bloomberg City Lab that combines the models of buildings from Sergei Ravenko and a lot of other sources of data to visualize the destruction in Ukraine. Can you describe how you did this? Maybe, Maria, I'll ask you to start. Originally, we got a pitch from a now graduate student of Berkeley. Her name is Karina, who is originally from Kharkiv in Ukraine and has been living in

the United States for a few years studying. She had started to put together a list, very specifical list actually of specific sites in Ukraine that had been destroyed during the invasion since February. So she sent to us like that massive data sets of strikes that she had recorded and kind of like fact checked through different sources on social media but also on like local kind of like news websites and everything. So we really started from here.

We're graphics journalists and data journalists, so when we were approaching this story, we were thinking about what visuals we could include, and so we were looking online for these potential three D models and visuals of some of the important sites that had been damaged, and we found Sergey who is an architect in Kiev, and he had scanned different cultural sites that had been destroyed and he created these pretty incredible three D models that are very detailed.

We contacted him and he was willing to help us and willing to share his work, and so that's kind of how got started with some of the visuals in the piece. Is it the belief of the government that Russia is deliberately targeting Ukraine's cultural heritage. Everyone that we spoke to, many of the Ukrainian citizens that we spoke to believe that these damage and destruction is not accidental, but it's very targeted. Rachel. What are people in these

towns where cultural sites have been targeted? What are they doing to protect what's still there? What are they doing to try to collect what has been damaged but not destroyed, to keep it from being damaged further, There's been quite a lot of grassroots efforts by ordinary Ukrainian citizens to protect monuments, putting sandbags around statues, to remove paintings from burning buildings, in order to protect the art of folklore

artists of Ukrainian origin. Ordinary citizens have really stepped up in physical ways to protect these buildings and monuments. But also because of Ukraine's huge I T sector, there are lots of digital archiving being done by Ukrainians in the country and abroad in order to you know, store documents on servers that are outside of the country in case there's any damage to them. So many different citizens are taking things into their own hands in order to protect

their culture and heritage. After the war is over and Ukraine begins to rebuild, they'll also want to rebuild some of these cultural sites. A lot of what has been lost cannot be replaced, precious artwork and other artifacts. What is the government doing to actually try to think about how they will preserve and then restore the cultural heritage

of the country. The question that we've heard from lots of the architects that they're thinking about now is not how much it will cost, but how they'll preserve certain memories of these destroyed sites, how they'll preserve the fact that these were destroyed in war, and how they'll take certain sites and think about remembrance for the lives lost or the cultural significant objects or buildings that were destroyed.

It's hard to estimate how much it's actually going to cost to rebuild a certain church or a museum, but the conversations that we've heard are a lot about what will be rebuilt, what will be remembered, what will be restored, and what will just be kept in its destroyed state to serve as a memorial. Ukrainian is now who are seeing all of this being destroyed will know what they've lost, but younger generations will never have the benefit of having

seen this. How are young people looking at the future of Ukraine's culture when so much of its past has been destroyed. I think that's where a lot of the digital records will come in. We've seen, you know, students on social media posting about sites that they've seen in photos or in videos that have been damaged, and there's this huge effort to record the destruction it's happening in the sites and marking these sites on maps and knowing

which churches have been damaged. From what we've seen, a lot of young people are very much involved in recording the actual on the ground damage that's going on in their cities, and that kind of contributes to a collective remembrance and a collective documentation that can then hopefully be used to not forget and to remember and to possibly reconstruct our memorialize. Rachel Doddald and Marie Patino, thanks so

much for taking the time. Thank you, Thank you. You can see Marie Patino and Rachel Doddle's immersive visual story with photos and the three D models we've been talking about on Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to us here at the Big Take the Daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app app podcasts or wherever you listen, read Today's story, and subscribe to our daily

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