From: Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 1180)
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
Psalm 130:5-6
During today’s church service, I noticed the flag on the flagpole at the Independence Square was lowered — a sign of mourning. I remembered how we were driving across the river last week, and we could see the largest flag in Kyiv also lowered. I wonder if it ever goes up.
Last night, russia launched a record number of 273 drones. Our air-defense forces shot down or neutralized 216 of them, which means that 57 still caused damage. They won’t give details on which objects were hit (to leave the challenge to the enemy intelligence), so it might look like it wasn’t a big deal, but there are reports of a few casualties only in the Kyiv region, and if we truly value human life, a death of even one person should be a tragedy.
Yesterday, a russian drone attacked a bus in the Sumy region. The bus was evacuating people, mostly elderly women and the surveillance drone followed them only to send a kamikaze drone to attack.
May 18 is also the day when we remember the genocidal deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviets in 1944. Almost one-half of the deported Crimean Tatars died on the way or during the first years of exile. Stalin ordered to rename cities and villages in Crimea to erase the traces of its indigenous population and repopulated the peninsula with people from the russian republic. His strategy still pays off today when russia claims Crimea as its territory and justifies the occupation with the need to defend russian-speaking population. The Crimean Tatars had to relive the tragedy in 2014 when many of them left their homes because of the risk of persecution.
Our intelligence has warned about a potential launch of a long-range missile this night as part of a russian intimidation strategy. I remembered how we used to fervently pray in 2022 that whatever russia launches would explode without causing damage to Ukraine. That is the prayer I go to bed with tonight.
Voice of Ukraine 