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.
Strike followed visit by US envoys
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.
A friendship deepened into love
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.
When they finally succeeded, they were assigned 8 September. Nobody could have predicted that their apartment would be badly damaged on the same day.
It wasn’t the first time for Liudmyla. She had already lived through one attack, on 20 August, when a strike cut the gas lines and shattered windows in her home. She was badly frightened and for a time was afraid to go back.
Eventually, ordinary life pulled her back in: The wedding was coming, and the children had to go to school.
More attacks hit as they wait at registry office
Eventually, the two put on their wedding clothes and headed to the registry office.
Leonid tried to keep their spirits up. What mattered most to him, he said, was for his bride to be smiling.
“It’s fine. We’ll get through it,” he said.
When they stepped outside their apartment, the courtyard looked almost apocalyptic, with a column of black smoke rising behind a brightly colored children’s playground. Neighbors clearing debris stopped to congratulate the couple.
“We should all be celebrated, that we survived,” Liudmyla replied.
The couple arrived at the registry office on time, at 10:40am.
Leonid wore an embroidered vyshyvanka, a traditional Ukrainian shirt, with a pattern that matched the one on Liudmyla’s dress.
In place of black dress pants, he wore army trousers — he couldn’t dig his own out of the rubble — and black sneakers with fluorescent yellow soles and laces, for the same reason. Liudmyla’s white tulle overlay had tiny, barely visible holes that were torn as she pulled it out from the rubble and broken glass.
Shortly after they arrived, a siren sounded: Another attack had begun, and the registry office closed for safety. The couple waited in the courtyard, unsure how long it would last.
Explosions echoed nearby as strikes hit surrounding districts and fires broke out. Almost three hours passed before the alert finally ended, and the couple hurried back inside.
Against all odds, they became husband and wife
Just before entering the hall for the ceremony, they paused, trading nervous jokes.
“I didn’t even get to finish the repairs at home,” Leonid joked about their now-wrecked apartment.
“I’ve never had such a spectacular day,” his bride replied.
The ceremony went ahead as the officiant told them, “Love is when two people become a team.”
Moments later, the two were officially married.
“We’re gaining a new life, because we survived,” Liudmyla said. “You could probably call (it) a new life because it could have ended today, and none of this would happen.”
In a different scenario, “I wouldn’t be wearing this dress. Someone would be picking out something else for me instead, something darker.”
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