On June 6, 2022, Tobias Thyberg, Ambassador of Sweden to Ukraine, visited Velyka Dymerka, which was liberated from occupation in April. The Ambassador met with municipality leaders, reviewed the work of the Administrative Service Centre, and visited neighboring villages close to the municipality centre, which have also suffered greatly from Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“On Sweden’s National Day, I visited the liberated Velyka Dymerka. We have been supporting municipalities in Ukraine since the 1990s and we know their strength. We are now focusing our efforts on helping them recover,” said the Ambassador.

The occupation of the municipality lasted for about a month and will be remembered forever by the locals for the extreme brutality and violence of the Russian military.

In Velyka Dymerka, more than 200 houses were destroyed, and the infrastructure of neighboring villages was severely damaged. In Bohdanivka, a kindergarten and a school were completely destroyed. The municipality’s ASC building survived, but the equipment was damaged or stolen. The ASC is working and will soon receive computer equipment with installed software and a passport station camera from the Swedish-Ukrainian project PROSTO “Support for the availability of administrative services in Ukraine”.

“Sweden has for many years supported decentralization reform in Ukraine. This was a TOP priority for us. We see that today Ukraine is defending itself at all levels: from the government to rural hromadas and municipalities. That is why we believe in the success of this reform and even now we are working in this direction together with our partners. It is very important for Sweden to understand exactly how the war affected Ukrainian municipalities in order to continue supporting this area,” said Tobias Thyberg, Ambassador of Sweden to Ukraine.