Submitting this, as it's a bit surreal to see a window manufacturer go out of business due to lack of demand after reading a bunch of articles about how Ukraine's been unable to obtain windows. When I was reading some documents from the Ukrainian government last year, one of their most-immediate economic asks was for funds to help build window and glass construction facilities, because they couldn't get ahold of windows to replace those destroyed by explosions.
A team of Warsaw-based volunteers have won praise for their campaign to replace windows in Ukraine damaged by Russian shelling.
Co-founded by Polish activist Zofia Jaworowska and Kyiv architect Petro Vladimirov, the Okno Projekt (Project Window) has so far seen hundreds of disused windows gathered and transported to enjoy a second life in war-torn Ukraine.
Born in July of last year, the initiative was launched when a wave of Ukrainians began returning home from Poland to liberated territories around Kyiv and the Chernihiv and Kherson oblasts.
Jaworowska said: “Winter was coming and it was necessary to help with repairing houses as soon as possible – in the first two months alone we managed to collect nearly 700 windows from across Poland send two full trucks to Ukraine.”
Explaining the urgency of the action, Vladimirov added: “Because of explosion, glass and windows are the first thing that are destroyed so we decided to concentrate on supplying windows. We found out that Ukraine has no facility producing window glass and that before the war 75 percent of it was imported from Russia and Belarus.”
By contrast, Poland is the largest exporter of windows in the EU.
“One and a half thousand windows in a year sounds like 'wow' to someone, but looking at the scale of the destruction, we understand that it is just a drop in the ocean,” said Vladimirov.
Scotland has a charity trying to put together (unglamorous) ad-hoc replacement windows for destroyed Ukrainian ones using PVC pipe and plastic wrap. Quoting them:
Since the start of the war, an estimated 1-10 million windows have been blown out in Ukraine.