CHERNIHIV, Ukraine — There was one topic of conversation among the women bundled up in front of a bombed-out building the other day as they waited in a long line at a humanitarian food truck, a nippy wind swirling around them.
“When are you going to get your glass?” one asked.
“Have you called about the glass?” another said.
“It was really cold last night. Didn’t you feel it?” said a third. “When’s the glass coming?”
This is becoming a big problem in Ukraine. So many windows have been shattered by explosions — “millions of them,” one humanitarian official estimated — that there is a nationwide run on glass.
In the towns and cities that the Russian military has pounded with earthshaking artillery barrages, nothing has been spared — not the high rises, not the schools, not the squat little cottages. Just on Monday, the shock waves from a powerful Russian missile that exploded more than 800 feet from a nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine blew out more than 100 windows at the plant.
This is what has happened to countless people’s homes in the line of fire: They might have been spared a direct hit, but all their windows have been shattered. And winter is coming. Fast.
The other week here in Chernihiv, an elegant city in northern Ukraine, the temperature dropped from about 80 degrees Fahrenheit to almost freezing.
No doubt that Ukraine is facing a host of crises within crises, but one of the most urgent is the scramble to get damaged homes ready for winter, and that is where the glass comes in.
