Deadly Russian strikes on Kyiv fail to cancel Ukrainian soldier’s wedding
Liudmyla Ryzhak spent the eve of her wedding ironing her delicately embroidered dress, laying out a full white tulle skirt beside her husband’s traditionally patterned shirt, before hanging them on the bedroom door.
Following repeated delays caused by the war with Russia, she was only hours away from marrying her partner, a Ukrainian soldier, in a ceremony in the capital scheduled for Tuesday morning.
However, as the pair slept, a Russian strike struck a warehouse across the street from their building. The resulting blast wave ripped through the apartment, threatening to stop the wedding.
The couple were soon digging their wedding clothes out of the rubble, with Ryzhak pulling her skirt from beneath the debris and shaking off pieces of broken glass.
The strike came soon after US envoys visited Ukraine on Sunday, a trip that brought a lull in Russian attacks. The assaults then resumed with drones and missiles.
Explosions were heard in Kyiv for almost five hours overnight. Strikes continued during the day Tuesday.
Like many others in Kyiv, the couple decided the attacks would not derail their lives and forged ahead with the ceremony. It had taken a long time for her fiancé, Leonid Ryzhak, to make it back from the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
“If God gave me a continuation of life, then why should I put it off?” the bride said. “For someone, it ended. And who can guarantee this won’t happen again tomorrow? That tomorrow won’t come for us? At least for now, I have the right to be happy. Both him and me.”
Liudmyla and Leonid awoke from the blast, which blew out the apartment’s windows and scattered its furniture. A burned curtain hung in shreds.
Their ears deafened by the explosion, the couple’s only immediate thought was the risk of a second strike. They fled to a shelter with Liudmyla’s 6-year-old daughter and two guinea pigs but without the cat, which had hidden in fright and could not be found.
They were lucky: By the time the second strike hit, they were already safe. The apartment was rendered uninhabitable until repairs are made.
The two met three years ago through mutual friends, coming together as adults who weren’t looking for anything serious. Both had children from previous marriages.
But the friendship deepened. She supported him through his deployments to the front, and slowly the relationship grew into love. Leonid Ryzhak, who serves as part of a team that deploys bomber drones in the Pokrovsk area, arrived in Kyiv for a long-awaited vacation a week and a half earlier, just as near-constant air raid alerts and daytime attacks began disrupting life in the capital.
For six days straight, the couple went to the registry office but could not submit their documents because of constant air raid sirens.
