Voice of Ukraine

From: Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 829):

‭Let the groans of the prisoners come before you;
according to your great power,
preserve those doomed to die!
Return sevenfold into the lap of our neighbors
the taunts with which they have taunted you,
O Lord!
Psalm 79:11-12

I didn’t write anything last night because I went camping with my students. It’s one of our school’s traditions that needed to be altered (but not canceled) because of the war. We went to bed in our tents but woke up from a siren in the middle of the night. Dozens of missiles were coming at Ukraine. Thankfully, there was a safe place we could go to. And the kids were fine, they went back to sleep right away. Adults, however, had a hard time. I kept checking my phone for news, trying to find out which regions would be hit. I felt angry at the wickedness of our “neighbors.” It was so hard to grasp the fact that the starry sky we had been gazing at a few hours before could betray us and become the medium for the deadly weapon. Thankfully, Kyiv was safe that night, but the rest of Ukraine wasn’t.

They launched a total of 100 aerial weapons – 47 drones and 53 missiles of different types. They were targeting energy infrastructure once again. Our air-defense forces shot down 81 targets, but the damage has been done. The DniproHES (the hydropower station in Zaporizhzhia) is in critical condition. It cannot produce electricity, and the dam isn’t safe to be used as a bridge. It looks like they want to destroy it completely, just as they did with the Kakhovka dam last year.

Their wickedness knows no limit. Yesterday, 75 Ukrainians returned from the Russian captivity during the POW swap. They went through medical examination right away, and a few of them looked like the people in pictures from a Nazi concentration camp.

Lord, return sevenfold to them!