Turning pain to progress: Alliance imagines a new, better Ukraine

Olha Pikula spends her days imagining and working toward a Mariupol that rises from the ashes of Russia’s invasion and occupation as a renewed, vibrant city.

The Mariupol of Ms. Pikula’s vision is green, inclusive, economically diverse, designed with women in mind, and attractive to Ukrainian youth anxious to play their part in a city’s rebirth.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mariupol, home to one of Europe’s largest steel mills, was a city of a half-million people that won recognition for good governance.

Today it’s a city of perhaps 100,000 residents, streets of destroyed buildings, mass graves of thousands – and it’s in the hands of occupiers.

But Ms. Pikula – a Mariupol council member who now serves her city’s displaced population from government-in-exile offices in Kyiv – insists that the devastation must also be seen as an