Veronika Kozhushko, an 18-year-old artist, was amongst seven folks killed on 30 August by a Russian guided bomb assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest metropolis and a cultural centre.
Her father, Ihor Kozhushko, mentioned she was struck in a park, 50 meters from the epicentre of the explosion, the Ukrinform information company reported. She died in a hospital of her accidents. Her demise underscored the toll of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the younger technology of cultural figures.
Kozhushko knew Serhiy Zhadan, a distinguished Ukrainian author who lived in Kharkiv for years and is now serving within the Nationwide Guard of Ukraine. In a Fb submit on 31 August, he described her as “very younger, honest and gifted”. He wrote: “An hour earlier than her demise, she despatched her new drawing. That’s, her final drawing. The Russians proceed to destroy our future. There isn’t any clarification for this. And there’s no forgiveness both.”
Veronika Kozhushko’s drawing despatched to the Ukrainian author Serhiy Zhadan Picture: Serhiy Zhadan/Fb
Kozhushko, who was additionally a poet, drew inspiration artists and writers from the Nineteen Twenties and 30s generally known as the Executed Renaissance, a lot of whom had been from Kharkiv and had been executed throughout Stalin’s reign of terror.
Pen Ukraine has compiled an inventory of 122 Ukrainian cultural figures killed since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
In a brand new loss following Russia’s assault on Wednesday on Lviv in western Ukraine, a mom and her three daughters had been killed, together with the eldest daughter, Daria Bazylevych, who had deliberate to commit her life to Ukrainian tradition. The Ukrainian Catholic College, the place she was a pupil, quoted from her scholarship software in a submit about her demise.
“I’m within the tradition and historical past of my nation, and sooner or later I wish to develop the tradition of Ukraine and inform the entire world about it,” she wrote. “This ardour arose in me because of my household, who at all times shared with me tales concerning the trials our ancestors went by means of because of the World Wars, the Holodomor, and the Soviet Union.”
“All of Daria’s plans and desires had been killed by Russia,” the college concluded in its submit. “We name on the world to cease the Russian terrorist state.”
