Fiona4Ukraine

  There was a ceasefire on Saturday 11 April until the end of the day on Sunday 12 April - Orthodox Christian Easter. Both sides accused each other of thousands of violations along the 1,200km (745-mile) frontline. But there was a welcome lull in Russian air raids, although the silence in Kharkiv felt strange over those 32 hours. Orthodox Easter is marked by church services, including the blessing of the traditional paska Easter bread and dyed, decorated eggs.  This is a video of the priest blessing the Easter baskets at one of the churches in Kharkiv. If you look closely, you'll see that people are being literally doused with water. It was a cold day, too! Hell's Kitchen had its own Easter celebrations... For Kharkiv and other cities close to the frontline, as well as having a religious significance, celebrations are a sign of hope and resilience amidst ongoing safety concerns and war-time restrictions, e.g. on midnight services. As soon as the ceasefire ended on "Bright ...

When I got off the train in Kharkiv over 3 weeks ago, the first thing to greet me was an air raid siren which, however you want to look at it, is a sign of coming home. It's taken me a little time to adjust to some of the changes in my volunteer coordination role, but what hasn't changed is the warm welcome and affection every day in Hell's Kitchen. From that perspective, it felt as if I never left. Winter is finally changing to spring. It's difficult to describe the daily difficulties and stress of a hard, cold winter, even without the war - wearing enough layers of clothing, boots, crampons, always looking at your feet to avoid slipping (again!) on refrozen snow, the shrinking of life because it's really too cold to go anywhere. One of the foreign volunteers put it eloquently: "Perhaps one of my biggest takeaways this time is the snow. The hardship of winter, the fragility of life/injury due to nature not aggression." Now the first bulbs can be seen, the...