Ukrainians no longer want to celebrate Christmas on the same day as the Russians. So, this year, more than ever, they celebrated Christmas in a new way.
Our colleagues Viorica Tătaru and Andrei Captarenco celebrated Christmas on the front line in Kherson, where on the eve the Russians bombed the center of the city while people were shopping for the holiday meal. A shrapnel detached from a Russian missile also reached the TV8 team car.
The TV8 team went to Kherson for reports about the Christmas celebration in wartime conditions, and by chance Viorica and Andrei are sheltered by Ecaterina, with her maiden name Crăciun, born in a Romanian family from Chernivtsi.
And if we are used to associating wines with selected dishes, Romanians from Kherson associate polenta with pickled watermelons.
After the bombings on Saturday, yesterday was a relatively quiet day in Kherson. In a deserted church mother and son were singing a carol.
A pensioner, met in the street, told us that, this year, he taught his granddaughter different carols.
People are scared after Saturday’s carnage, when two rockets aimed at the city center killed eight people and injured 35.
It happens just a hundred meters from the TV8 team, which luckily was filming inside at the time. One of the shrapnel, however, hit the car of our colleagues.
A woman injured during the attack came to ask for first aid from Ecaterina, the host of our film crew, and our medical kit was of great help.
“- Do you know who my earthling is? Nemtsov. We were colleagues. I was at the Water Institute, and he was at the Polytechnic. If Nemtsov were alive and president, this massacre would not have happened. But they liquidated him”.
The terror that befell the people made them look at the meaning of the holiday differently.
For them, the Nativity is no longer associated with Christmas fairs and copious meals, but with the hope that the Nativity will bring them the long-awaited peace.
