This is the moment when a provocative Ukrainian woman holds back her tears as she sings the national anthem as she cleans up the rubble of her bombed-out home.
Oksana Gulenko’s home was among the 33 civilian sites bombed by Russia in his attack on Ukraine in the last 24 hours, although Moscow has said it will hit only military targets.
Shot from her ravaged apartment, a video shows Oksana calmly clearing her home of rubble as she sings her country’s national anthem, titled “Ukraine’s Glory and Freedom Are Still Dead.”
This is the moment when the provocative Ukrainian – Oksana Gulenko – holds back tears while singing the national anthem, while cleaning the rubble of her bomb house
Most of the occupants of the apartment building in which he lives are families of former Soviet servicemen and border guards.
Like his neighbors, Oksana’s father – who served in Afghanistan in the 1980s – received the apartment from the military in recognition of his service.
“I was asleep, a sudden explosion erupted and I was thrown 3 meters from the bedroom in the corridor,” she said.
“I got scared, I started crawling on the floor,” added Oksana, a medic at a military hospital in Kiev.
Today was to be an important day in the nascent business that Oksana’s daughter Katya started a few years ago. The confectionery that Katya owns and that Oksana helps to work was today to host a big birthday party.
The supplies that the mother and daughter planned to use to decorate the birthday box were sprinkled with pieces of explosive glass.
Instead, a devastated but provocative Katya sang Ukraine’s national anthem as she rubbed pieces of broken glass off the window sill.
Oksana Gulenko’s home was among 33 civilian sites bombed by Russia in its attack on Ukraine in the past 24 hours, although Moscow has said it will hit only military targets.
Shot from her bombed-out apartment, a video shows Oksana calmly clearing her home of rubble as she sings her country’s national anthem.
In the photo: The baking utensils left on Oksana’s kitchen table are shown covered with glass
The footage also shows the outside of Oksana’s apartment building.
On the street below, rubble and debris cover the ground. The facade of the building has been destroyed and most of the windows have been blown out.
There is significant structural damage to the building, with most of the doors and balconies collapsing.
A fire truck is parked in front of the building and firefighters are seen carrying a hose inside to put out the flames that broke out in the rubble.
Appropriately in the face of the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s national anthem is centered around a country fighting for freedom from oppression.
Translated from Ukrainian, the texts open with “The glory of Ukraine has not perished, neither freedom nor will” and evokes a tone of hope and challenge.
The anthem speaks of a fierce struggle for freedom and warns all potential invaders that “Our enemies will disappear like dew in the morning sun.”
The anthem was formally adopted by the Ukrainian Parliament on 15 January 1992, and the official text used today was adopted in 2003.
The text of the anthem uses a slightly modified original first stanza of a poem written in 1862 by Pavlo Chubinski of Kiev.
Over the years and under Russian occupation, Ukraine had previously tried and failed to adopt the national anthem before finally doing so with the fall of the Soviet Union.
The blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine was also officially restored in 1992. The blue represents the sky, while the yellow symbolizes Ukraine’s vast wheat fields.
Pictured: A resident of an apartment building throws debris out the window while clearing his home after being devastated by a bomb blast
Pictured: A fire truck is parked in front of the devastated building and firefighters are seen carrying a hose inside to put out the flames that broke out in the rubble
National Anthem of Ukraine: “Ukraine’s glory and freedom have not yet perished”
Ukraine’s glory has not perished, neither freedom nor will.
To us, colleagues, fate will smile once again.
Our enemies will disappear like dew in the morning sun,
And we too will rule, brethren, in our free land.
[Refrain]
We will lay down our souls and bodies to achieve our freedom,
And we will show that we, brothers, are from the line of Kozak.
We will lay down our souls and bodies to achieve our freedom,
And we will show that we, brothers, are from the Cossack people.
[Additional pre-2003 draft lyrics]
We will stand, brethren, in a bloody battle, from Xi’an to the Don,
We will not allow others to rule in our homeland.
The Black Sea will smile and Grandpa Dnieper will rejoice,
Because in our own Ukraine, fate will shine again.
[Refrain]
Our perseverance and sincere efforts will be rewarded,
And the song of freedom will be heard all over Ukraine.
Flowing from the Carpathians, and through the steppes, roaring,
The glory and glory of Ukraine will be known among all nations.
[Refrain]
The missiles continued to hit the Ukrainian capital on Friday as Russian forces pushed ahead and authorities in Kiev said they were preparing for an attack aimed at overthrowing the government.
Sirens of air strikes blew over Kiev, a European city of three million people, and some residents sheltered in subway stations a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion that shocked the world.
Ukrainian authorities say a Russian plane was shot down and crashed into a building in Kiev during the night, setting it on fire and injuring eight people.
A senior Ukrainian official said Russian forces would enter areas just outside the capital later Friday and that Ukrainian troops were defending positions on four fronts, despite being superior.
Kyiv City Council has warned residents of the Obolon district near an air base captured by Russian paratroopers on Thursday to remain indoors due to “the approach of active hostilities”.
Windows were blown up in a 10-story apartment building near Kiev’s main airport, where a two-meter crater full of rubble showed where a projectile had struck before dawn. A police officer said there were wounded but not killed.
“How can we experience this in our time? What to think. “Putin must be burned in hell with his whole family,” said Oksana Gulenko, sweeping broken glass from her room.
A neighbor, Soviet Army veteran Anatoly Marchenko, 57, could not find his cat, which escaped during the shelling.
“I know people there, they are my friends,” he told Russia. “What do they need from me?” War came to my house.
Witnesses said loud explosions were heard in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city near the Russian border, and air raids sounded over Lviv to the west. Authorities say heavy fighting has taken place in the eastern city of Sumy.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have fled major cities.
Dozens were reported killed. Russian troops captured the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant north of Kiev as they advanced on the city from Belarus. Ukraine said radiation levels there have been raised.
Natalie Sevryukova bursts into tears as she stands in front of the ruins of her Kiev apartment in the early hours of Friday
Widespread damage to an apartment in Kiev, Ukraine is visible, and a Russian attack on the capital is expected today
A man in camouflage takes a picture of a crater where a Russian rocket landed, destroying part of an apartment building in Kiev, which is now under heavy attack.
Russian armor is now advancing on Kiev from the north and east, with US intelligence saying the plan is to besiege the city, seize an airport and launch paratroopers who will then attack the capital. The goal would be to take over the government and force them to sign a peace treaty that would restore control of the country to Russia or to a Russian puppet.
U.S. officials say Russia’s original goal is to oust President Vladimir Zelensky and “decapitate” his government. Zelensky said troops are coming for him, but he will stay in Kiev.
“The enemy marked me as the number one target,” Zelenski said in a video message. “My family is number two. They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.
Russia launched its invasion by land, air and sea on Thursday after Putin declared war, in the biggest attack on a European country since World War II.
Putin says Ukraine is an illegitimate state carved by Russia, a view Ukrainians believe is aimed at erasing their more than millennial history.
Putin’s full goals remain unclear. He says he is not planning a military occupation just to disarm Ukraine and remove its leaders.
But it is unclear how a pro-Russian leader can be appointed without holding much of the country. Russia has not named a single figure and has not mentioned one.
After Moscow denied for months that it was planning an invasion, the news that Putin had ordered one was a shock to Russians accustomed to seeing their 22-year-old ruler as a cautious strategist. Many Russians have friends and family in Ukraine.
Russia intervened against the dissent, and state media ruthlessly described Ukraine as a threat, but thousands of Russians took to the streets to protest the war. Hundreds were arrested quickly.
A pop star posted a video on Instagram opposing the war, and the head of the Moscow State Theater left, saying she would not take her salary from a murderer.