The former city of shipbuilders has degraded and is dying out in entire neighborhoods
The once large Soviet industrial city of Nikolaev is turning into a semblance of Chernobyl Pripyat - the city is dying out after the shutdown of the largest factories and mass emigration of the population.
The former editor-in-chief of Economic Pravda, Sergei Lyamets, who was born in Nikolaev, writes about this in his blog.
According to him, the Black Sea Shipbuilding Plant, the Nikolaev Seaport, the Okean, Zarya, and Nibullon factories, which until recently were famous not only in Ukraine, have fallen into disrepair, the owners are dismantling them for ferrous metal and selling them.
“Today Nikolaev is a dying city of small stalls. Old people walk along the streets - the same ones who came to it at the call of the Motherland. Today they receive miserable pensions, visit each other and, by and large, wait. When I look at Nikolaev, I see a demographic curve like those drawn by the Ella Libanova Institute. A huge pear, where the thickest part is people of retirement age. In 20 years they will be gone, and the city will be reduced threefold, maybe even fourfold.
The population is growing only near cemeteries. Entire neighborhoods are dying out. Some are still alive, but have already degenerated. Old people groan, people aged 25-40 line up for cheap moonshine. Little ones are not visible. Degradation and depopulation,” writes Lyamets.
The journalist emphasizes that against this background, young people are leaving en masse to work in other cities and countries, where they hope for a better life.
“The whole city emanates a dull, moldy hopelessness. If Pripyat is a post-apocalypse, then Nikolaev is a pre-apocalypse. Do you want a dose of despair and disbelief? Take the Intercity parody to Kherson and manage to jump out during the three-minute stop. You’re not mistaken - this is a regional center and in the past almost a million-plus city,” laments Lyamets.
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