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New Year in Kyiv: more missiles, few reasons to celebrate [1]
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Date: 2023-04
An hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve, the air in Protasiv Yar, a historic district on the edge of Kyiv’s city centre, was warm and still.
Not a soul could be seen. Lights were visible in apartment buildings, even those whose windows had been shattered earlier in the day when a Russian rocket was downed by Ukrainian air defences. But no sounds of cheer or New Year preparations could be heard.
The silence was broken only by an elderly woman climbing a nearby street, carrying a white plastic bag and sobbing quietly. She looked back at her home, damaged in the Russian rocket attack. She was going to live with her daughter for the time being, she told me.
A series of continuous attacks by Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones on Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine started on the night of 29 December and lasted until 2 January. The Russian campaign, specifically targeting New Year celebrations, cost people their lives, homes, health and peace. Many Kyiv residents spent the first two nights of 2023 sleepless in bomb shelters.
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New Year’s Eve used to be an important holiday for Ukrainians. But now, as the war fast approaches its second year, holidays are just dates on the calendar that recall what life was like before Russia invaded.
Lives lost, houses destroyed
As Serhiy Kaharlytskyi talks calmly about the Russian rocket that killed his wife Iryna and destroyed his house in Protasiv Yar on 31 December, I ask how he maintains his composure.
“My skin holds me together, on the inside…” he replies, as he gestures wearily and sighs.
Serhiy and his son survived: they were in another room, two walls away from the blast. But Iryna was crushed when the wall of their kitchen fell on her after the explosion.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-new-year-christmas-celebrations-war-missiles/
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