A ballistic missile struck an apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Tuesday, killing one person and injuring 15, four of them seriously, officials said. Ukrainian officials denounced the Christmas Eve attack on the city, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home town.
“While other countries of the world are celebrating Christmas, Ukrainians are continuing to suffer from endless Russian attacks,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, wrote on Telegram.
Nearly three years into the Russian invasion, Christmas celebrations across Ukraine are shrouded in grief. “Not all of us are home, unfortunately. Sadly, not everyone has a home. And tragically, not everyone is still with us,” Zelenskyy said in an address. This will be the first Christmas that Lyubov spends without her son Taras Onyskiv, who died aged 32 in May while fighting off Russian troops on the eastern front. She brought a Christmas tree to her son’s grave in the Lychakiv cemetery in south-eastern Lviv, covered in a dusting of fresh snow. “We’ll come and spend Christmas here,” she said, after wrapping fairy lights over the tombstone. Mariya Lun lost her son Yuri in 2022. “We will bring Christmas porridge here on Christmas Eve,” Lun said. “We will pray that it will be easy for him in heaven without us.” Zelenskyy signed a law in July 2023 to move the official Christmas Day holiday to 25 December, departing from the Russian Orthodox Church tradition of celebrating on 7 January.
