By Vladyslav Smilianets
KYIV, July 3 (Reuters) – Iryna Plekhova wobbled as she stepped over the ashes of family treasures such as charred books, scorched icons and a melted rosary in her Kyiv apartment, damaged on Thursday in a Russian airstrike.
The rosary, she said, was given to her family by Pope Francis.
“We don’t have anything left,” said Plekhova, a 42-year-old cultural manager. “Everything was totally burned.”
Thursday’s missile and drone attack, one of the worst attacks on Kyiv in more than four years of war, killed 30 people and wrought damage across the Ukrainian capital.
It also wiped away precious items which Plekhova and her film-director husband had collected over decades. The couple lived in a building near the country’s largest film archive which had historically housed Ukrainian filmmakers.
It had been slightly damaged in a previous attack on June 15, but debris from Thursday’s strike caused a fire that engulfed much of the structure.
Among the lost items were around 5,000 old books, an icon her grandmother had kept throughout World War Two and DVDs of old footage the couple had planned to submit to the archive.
Dressed in a disposable medical smock as she sorted through the debris, Plekhova flashed a smile when she noticed a lightly damaged plaque featuring Ukraine’s coat of arms sitting on a blown-out windowsill.
“Oh my lord, look what’s left – I’ll take it,” she said. Pointing to the corner, she added: “And there was also a Ukrainian flag hanging here.”
Attacks by Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, have frequently damaged Ukrainian landmarks, monuments and staples of cultural heritage, ranging from museums to churches.
Last month, the Dormition Cathedral of Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra complex – one of the holiest sites in Ukraine – was badly damaged in what Ukrainian officials said was a deliberate attack.
Plekhova and other Ukrainians say Russia is attempting to erase their culture as part of its war. Moscow has said it strikes only targets associated with Ukraine’s war effort.
(Writing by Dan Peleschuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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