ZELENODOLSK

HISTORY

The town of Zelenodolsk if the administrative centre of the Zelenodolsk urban territorial community. This young and cosy town was founded in 1961 at the same time as the construction of the Kryvyi Rih TPP, then Europe’s largest thermal power plant, began.

The town was built on the picturesque shore of the Zelenodolsk water-storage basin to provide housing to the power plant’s employees.

Today, Zelenodolsk is a comfortable, green, and cosy town.

Green Energy Community 

The community’s economy is based on the DTEK Kryvyi Rih Thermal Power Plant.

Concurrently, the community, like the whole world, is moving forward to decarbonization, since the ecological aspect is extremely important for building a comfortable and safe living environment.

That is why the community has created conditions for the development of alternative sources of energy.

Solar Park Maryanske LLC, one of the Dnipropetrovsk region’s largest solar power plants, operates in the community. Its area exceeds 40 hectares.

Also, the number of environmentally harmful emissions from the Kryvyi Rih TPP has been significantly reduced in recent years thanks to the installation of new filters, the use of cutting-edge technologies, and the reconstruction of power units for burning coal of the Ukrainian gas group.

ECONOMY

421 individual entrepreneurs and 131 legal entities working in the field of energy, agriculture, trade, and household and information services are registered in the community.

The community is an important logistics point for the export of Ukrainian grain through Ukrainian seaports. Since 2020, a transhipment terminal of the JV NIBULON LLC Zelenodolsk branch has been operating in the village of Maryanske, which stores and transports the products of Ukrainian agricultural producers to Mykolaiv or to international customers immediately by waterways using the company’s ships.

In the village of Velyka Kostromka, there is a unique snail farm – Kin Snail. The farm is engaged in breeding and sale of snails. It also supplies its products to the European Union countries.

Besides, the town of Zelenodolsk has a fishery that grows rare species of fish and produces black caviar.

SPORTS

The Zelenodolsk community is sports-minded.

Here, the Complex Children’s and Youth Sports School (a municipal institution) offers football, athletics, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, kayaking, canoeing, judo and other classes.

Zelenodolsk athletes represent the community at regional, regional, all-Ukrainian and international competitions at a decent level. Among them are Ukraine’s champions and medallists in athletics, kayaking and canoeing. A graduate of the rowing sports class Ruslan Dzhalilov represented Ukraine at the Olympics in Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008).

The community has developed a network of sports grounds to meet all the needs of young people: – state-of-the-art gyms, a skate park, a climbing wall, parkour grounds, etc. So, they have managed to create conditions for meaningful leisure time for young people.

Youth Council at the Zelenodolsk Town Council

At the Zelenodolsk Town Council, a youth council works arduously: it is an active participant in the community’s public life and initiator of nature protection, artistic, and volunteer actions.

In the conditions of full-scale Russian armed aggression against Ukraine, the youth of Zelenodolsk are actively engaged in volunteer activities: they weave nets, make ghillie suits, meet, and provide psychological assistance to, refugees from temporarily occupied territories, sort and distribute humanitarian aid to vulnerable groups of people. They, like every Ukrainian, work for victory!

ZELENODOLSK IS THE TOWN OF FESTIVALS

The large green park area of the town of Zelenodolsk has become a site for annual summer youth festivals.

The picturesque shore of the Zelenodolsk water-storage basin hosted ENERGY FEST (known as Green Town Fest until 2017) annually. It gathered up to 5,000 spectators and participants from different parts of Ukraine. The idea of the festival is to combine musical, sports and educational events. The guests of the festival were both amateurs and professional bands, such as TNMK, Boombox, InPlus and many others.

EDUCATIONAL AND MEDICAL SERVICES

After the unification of the community in October 2015, it has a developed network of educational and cultural institutions. Among them are 7 secondary education institutions (4  lyceums, 2 gymnasiums, and 1 elementary school), 5 preschool education institutions, 3 out-of-school education institutions (Centre for Out-Of-School Activities (a municipal institution), Zelenodolsk School of Arts (a municipal art educational institution), Complex Sports School for Children and Youth (a municipal institution)), and  3 cultural institutions (Yuvileynyi Culture Centre, Velyka Kostroma Centre of Culture and Leisure, Complex Maryanske Centre of Culture and Leisure).

Medical services to the population are provided by the Zelenodolsk Centre of Primary Health Care (a municipal non-profit enterprise) and 2 village dispensaries.

COMMUNITY AND WAR

The war destroyed the peaceful life of the inhabitants of the Zelenodolsk community. Almost from the first days of the full-scale invasion, the community became a front-line zone. On March 1, 2022, the residents of the community heard alarm signals for the first time. On March 19, 2022, there was the first shelling which led to the destruction of high-rise and private buildings. Since then, the territory of the community has been shelled almost daily.

“The Russian military uses long-range artillery, Smerch and Uragan anti-aircraft missile systems filled with cluster and phosphorous projectiles that are prohibited by international conventions for almost daily chaotic shelling of the community.

During six months of military operations on the territory of the community, 53 high-rise buildings out of 110 existing in the town of Zelenodolsk, 54 private houses in the village of Mala Kostromka, about 80 houses in the village of Velika Kostromka, 18 households and 5 apartments in the village of Maryanske were completely destroyed, and more than 100 houses were caused various damages.

Journalists call Zelenodolsk “a town in a film”, because most of the windows are covered with polyethylene”, – says Olha Tsytsyura, Secretary of the Zelenodolsk Town Council.

Administrative buildings, buildings of municipal institutions (4 educational institutions, 2 kindergartens, a library, a leisure centre, dispensaries, etc.) and enterprises were caused significant damage in the community.

The fishing industry was completely destroyed, energy and agricultural enterprises, and farms were damaged.

The war took the lives of 13 civilian residents of the community, 32 people, including one child, were injured to a different extent.

Today, the Zelenodolsk community is rightfully considered the shield of the Dnipropetrovsk region, because it borders the occupied Kherson region.

The Zelenodolsk community has become a hub for receiving refugees from the occupied Kherson region. We meet them, provide first aid, provide necessary clothes and hygiene products, help mothers with children with diapers and baby food.

Because of the danger and threat of shelling, most people leave for the town of Kryvyi Rih or other safe places by bus. Over 5,000 people (including about 1,000 children) were evacuated through the Zelenodolsk community, of which more than 800 people decided to stay in the community.

Since the roads from the occupied Kherson region were locked by Russian troops, people fled from the occupation by all means: they left on foot, on bicycles, in wheelchairs. They had to make their way to advanced Ukrainian positions through the fields, often coming under fire. Evacuating from Zelenodolsk to territories controlled by Ukraine, people left their bicycles in Zelenodolsk, so the town authorities organized bicycle parking for them. The people of Zelenodolsk believe that the time will come when Ukraine will regain the occupied territories and people will be able to return to their homes on the bicycles left here.

MAYOR

Dmytro Nevesely was elected Mayor of Zelenodolsk in December 2020. He was 34 years old then. He became one of the youngest mayors of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Young, energetic, full of ideas and faith in the best. Dmytro was born and grew up in the town of Zelenodolsk. He worked for the town-forming enterprise DTEK KRYVYI RIH TPP for more than 12 years. From 2015 to 2020, he worked as a deputy of the Zelenodolsk Town Council. He always had an active position, took part in social projects for the development of the territory, popularization of sports and a healthy lifestyle.

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

The Zelenodolsk community has an approved Development Strategy until 2028. The priority areas of socio-economic development are as follows:

• Facilitating the placement of enterprises on the territory of the community that will create jobs and pay taxes and fees to the local budget;
• Work on attracting investors, grants for implementation of investment projects;
• Consulting legal entities and individual entrepreneurs on issues within the competence of the executive committee and the town council and providing them with administrative services;
• Control over the work of the community’s utility enterprises and resulting improvement of the quality of utility services;
• Increasing energy efficiency by introducing energy management systems, developing energy plans, implementing projects;
• Improvement and greening of the community territory;
• Optimization of community educational institutions, which will improve the quality of educational services, in particular in rural areas;
• Development of culture and sports in the community.

However, the war forced the community to adjust its plans. Today, the primary task is to modernize shelters, prepare the community for winter, establish remote learning in schools and restore destroyed and damaged infrastructure.

List of Sources:

• Development strategy of the Zelenodolsk community until 2028
• Website of the Zelenodolsk Town Council
• Facebook of the Zelenodolsk Town Council
•  The Zelenodolsk community in action 
• Novoye Vremya
• nibulon.com/news
• website of the Ukrainian Crisis Media Cente
• Hromadske Radio