Russian shelling in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region killed at least four people on Sunday, including an 87-year-old man and his 81-year-old wife who died after a strike on their apartment building, as the country prepared to officially celebrate Christmas for the first time on Dec. 25.
The barrage injured nine other people, including a 15-year-old, sparked fires in homes and at a private medical facility, and set a local gas pipeline alight, Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Reuters reported that five people were killed, while the Ukrainian military yesterday said that Russia launched 31 drones and two missile attacks overnight, mostly targeting the south.
Photo: Reuters
“There are no holidays for the enemy,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on social media, commenting on the Kherson attack. “They do not exist for us as long as the enemy kills our people and remains on our land.”
The shelling across Kherson reached the center of the region’s capital city of the same name. The assault took place as Ukraine prepared to officially celebrate Christmas for the first time on Dec. 25, having previously marked the date on Jan. 7.
Some Orthodox Ukrainians observed Christmas on Dec. 25 last year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. The Russian Orthodox Church observes the birth of Jesus on Jan. 7.
The cathedral in the Monastery of the Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Kyiv, held its Christmas celebration on Jan. 7 of this year, but the service was held in the Ukrainian language for the first time in the 31 years of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union.
Zelenskiy signed legislation in July moving the public Christmas Day holiday to Dec. 25, although one of the country’s two competing Orthodox church organization’s is sticking with the January date dictated by the Julian calendar.
To mark Christmas Eve on Dec. 24, Zelenskiy addressed the nation in a video filmed in front of the floodlit St. Sophia Cathedral in central Kyiv.
“All Ukrainians are together,” he said. “We all celebrate Christmas together — on the same date, as one big family, as one nation, as one united country.”
He reassured Ukrainians fighting against Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country that “step by step, day by day, the darkness is losing.”
“Today, this is our common goal, our common dream, and this is precisely what our common prayer is for today. For our freedom. For our victory. For our Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.
In the southern Black Sea port of Odesa, churchgoers prayed and lit candles as priests in gold vestments held Christmas Eve service in the Cathedral of the Nativity, decorated with fir trees and a nativity scene.
“We believe that we really should celebrate Christmas with the whole world, far away, far away from Moscow. For me that’s the new message now,” said one smiling parishioner, Olena, whose son is a medic on the front line.
“We really want to celebrate in a new way. This is a holiday with the whole of Ukraine, with our independent Ukraine. This is very important for us,” she said.
Additional reporting by Reuters and AFP
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