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Krasnohrad Territorial Community
Kharkiv
Population:
The Krasnohrad Community is situated in Kharkiv Oblast in eastern Ukraine. Total area: 483.8 sq km The Krasnohrad Community comprises 26 settlements: the city of Berestyn, 21 villages and 4 towns.
As of 1 January 2025, the community’s population is 28,019 people.
Men: 13,154
Women: 14,865
Children: 4,211
Elderly people: 8,152
Working-age population: 15,656
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs): 8,719
History
The administrative centre of the community is the city of Berestyn, a city of raion subordination, the centre of Berestyn Raion, located on the Berestova River, 101 km southwest of Kharkiv.
The territory of the current Krasnohrad Community has a long historical past. Berestyn as a fortified settlement dates back to the time of the Trypillians (III millennium BC), who built huge cities with a population of up to 10,000 inhabitants, with straight rows of two-story houses, well-designed streets, and wide squares. Most settlements in the community have significant historical traditions.
For centuries, Berestyn has been the administrative centre of several different administrative units at the basic and subregional levels. The forerunner of the current community is the administrative centre of the Azov province, the fortress city of Bielovsk, as well as Kostiantynohrad as the centre of the Catherine province and the former Krasnohrad district. This means that Berestyn has considerable administrative experience.
The existing historical architectural monuments may be interesting for historical tourism in the future.
Economy and Welfare
About 150 business entities operate in the community – most of them are small businesses with up to 30 employees. Enterprises are engaged in agriculture, agricultural processing, trade, catering, and consumer services.
However, the community’s economy is based on the gas production industry, where about 3,000 community members work on a shift basis. Three gas production companies operate in the community.
To strengthen the community’s energy independence, the district heating company was equipped with cogeneration equipment with the support of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The community runs a birth support program that provides families with financial support at the birth of a child, creates conditions for safe motherhood, improves family planning, preserves the reproductive health of the population, and improves demographic processes.
The community initiated the solution to the problem of saving small rivers in the region, in particular the Berestova River. A working group has been set up to address water resources and environmental issues that are common not only to the Berestova, but to all rivers in Ukraine. They solve the main problems:
- uncontrolled landfills;
- land devastation with violation of the nature protection zone;
- illegal discharges of chemical waste;
- water blooms and reduced oxygen levels.
The Krasnohrad Community has an efficient education sector, which receives the largest share of funds from the community budget. There are 9 general secondary education institutions, 7 pre-school education institutions, 3 out-of-school units, 3 higher education institutions and a vocational education institution in the community. There are sports, art and music schools.
Much attention is paid to children with special educational needs, who receive psychological, pedagogical and correctional services in educational institutions. Specialists of various profiles work with these children to help them integrate into society.
The community also has a public library and 10 branches in the villages, a house of culture with 9 branches in rural areas.
There is a local history museum and an art gallery. The museum’s collection includes 35,000 exhibits.
Art gallery (24 halls). Opened in 1983, it displays arts and crafts, graphics, sculpture, and painting. About one thousand works were transferred to the museum for permanent storage by the Union of Artists of Ukraine. The collection of the art gallery consists of works by famous artists.
The museum’s territory is a kind of open-air museum – an ethnographic ensemble: a 19th-century Ukrainian house and a wooden windmill.
The healthcare sector is represented by primary and secondary healthcare institutions. The city hospital is a cluster hospital with 12 departments. Primary healthcare has 5 outpatient clinics and 5 health centres. Even the residents of the most remote corners of the community receive medical services in their settlements.
The community has sports and technical clubs “Technosport-Krasnohrad” and “Extreme-Moto”, a sports club “Olimp”, gyms “Athlete” and “Gim-Rex”, a Cossack fencing school “Bulat” and a children’s and youth sports school. The community’s athletes annually participate in national, European and world competitions.
Footballers Andrii Lunin (Real Madrid goalkeeper) and Mykhailo Mudryk (Chelsea midfielder) are natives of the community.
The community has a stadium, football and volleyball fields, street sports and children’s playgrounds, and gymnastic camps.
There are social service providers in the community: administrative services centre, social protection department, service for children and families, territorial social service centre, centre for comprehensive rehabilitation of children with disabilities.
In the near future, the community plans to open a daytime centre for social and psychological assistance to victims of domestic and/or gender-based violence.
The Community and the War
The geographical location of the community allowed it to avoid significant infrastructure damage at this stage of the war, and the community remains relatively stable, apart from the psychological impact on the population. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that there were losses as a result of the war. Men who have mobilized to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the loss of loved ones, migration and family separation all have a negative impact on community development.
The territories are not mined, so agriculture continues to operate at the pre-war level in general. However, the soils have received an appropriate level of pollution, which will affect yields in the future. Producers don’t buy organic fertilizer because the war forced them to allocate part of their resources to the army.
Since the outbreak of the war, the community has become a host to almost 10,000 internally displaced persons. From the first days of the war, residents of the Krasnohrad Community rushed to defend their homeland from Russian aggression. Today, over 1000 men from the community serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. To date, 75 soldiers from the community have been killed, 35 are missing, 2 are in captivity, and more than 84 are seriously wounded.
Those residents of the community who are unable to fight at the front today join various volunteer organisations and help the Ukrainian military by working in the rear.
Community People
The Head of the Community, Svitlana Kryvenko, was elected mayor in 2020. She has considerable experience in local government, having previously worked as a secretary of the village council and then was elected village head.
Svitlana Kryvenko names the following as priority areas of work:
- Entrepreneurship development. This initiative includes the possibility of financial support for local businesses, as well as the organization of trainings and workshops for entrepreneurs, which will help develop the business environment in the community.
- Public budget. The project can be a key to involving citizens in decision-making and resource allocation. The current restrictions under martial law may affect the timing of its implementation, but the authorities are working on its development.
- The Resilience Center project, which focuses on creating support and rehabilitation for veterans.
- The project “Day Center for Social and Psychological Assistance to Victims of Domestic Violence and/or Gender-Based Violence (with a Crisis Room)”, which is currently underway.
The community also has a Youth Council
Development Strategy
The effectiveness of the Krasnohrad Community’s activities lies in strategic planning. Since 2023, the city council has been a member of the USAID Governance and Local Accountability (HOVERLA) Activity, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2024, the community became a member of the Community Recovery and Support Project implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) with the financial support of the German Government through the German State Development Bank (KFW), which demonstrates the successful and effective work of the city council in the direction of decentralization of local self-government in Ukraine. Also, in cooperation with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (German International Cooperation Society (GIZ)) and with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, we are implementing the projects “Strengthening Urban Resilience in the Life Support of Urban Territorial Communities in Ukraine” and “Development of Social Infrastructure of Ukraine in Connection with the Increase in the Number of Internally Displaced Persons”. Since then, the city council has implemented almost two dozen successful projects together with partners, and with the USAID HOVERLA Activity coordinators we are developing a Community Development Strategy for the period up to 2027.
The main strategic goals of the community are as follows:
- Increasing the economic capacity of the community and attracting investment
- Comfortable infrastructure and quality of life in the community.
- Active, responsible, united and safe community
Sources
- Official website of the Berestyn City Council – krasnograd-rada.gov.ua
- Official Facebook page of the City Council facebook.com
- Fotogoroda online resource photogoroda.com
- Online resource – krasnograd.info
- Online resource History of Towns and Villages of Ukraine ukrssr.com.ua
- Online resource Kraina-UA kraina-ua.com
- Online resource Navigator Ukraina navigator-ukraina.com.ua
- Photo from the archive of the Berestyn City Council
- Online resource OBIEKTYV objectiv.tv
- Online resource Suspilne Kharkiv suspilne.media