Former Mykolaiv resident and artist, Alyona Yegorskaya, came from Odessa to paint her family house which was destroyed in the shelling.
“I had lived in this house for more than 20 years, my childhood and youth had been spent here, my child was born here. This place is very valuable, and I want to keep it at least in this way,” Alyona said.
She also mentioned that as a person representing art, she wants to keep it ‘for posterity as an edification’, so that ‘people will see and never do it again’. “War is the worst thing that can happen,” the woman added.
Footage filmed on Wednesday features Alyona sitting and painting among the rubble and construction debris in front of her destroyed former home.
The artist also said that she came to Mykolaiv to look at the ruins of her family home and capture it in a picture ‘to preserve these valuable memories, no matter how painful they may be’.
Alyona went on to say that she wanted the war to end with Ukraine’s victory, so that ‘new fascism’ is stopped.
“We didn’t know how strong we were until this war started. Now, the nation is strongly united, and everyone has their own front. Someone defends the Motherland with a machine gun in their hands, and someone with a brush and pencil can also influence society and tell about what is happening,” she added.
Mykolaiv authorities claimed that a ‘number of civilian buildings’, including an ‘educational institution’ had been damaged in recent shelling by Russian armed forces.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said on Monday that his country’s armed forces had continued to ‘launch long-range air- and sea-based precision-guided strikes’ on ‘Ukraine’s military command and energy systems’.
Those strikes came after Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out a “massive” drone attack on its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. Kiev has not claimed responsibility.
Moscow launched the military offensive in Ukraine in late February after recognising the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
Kiev denounced the Russian action, and President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed martial law throughout the country, announcing a general mobilisation.
