KYIV—On Christmas morning, a popular app that notifies Ukraine’s residents of danger showed the entire country as a red zone—Russia was shelling again. Heavy anti-aircraft booms could be heard somewhere on Kyiv’s outskirts, and authorities warned of fighter jets in the air above Belarus that could carry hypersonic missiles. But despite the ongoing missile strikes and significant power shortages that have plunged the city into darkness, Kyiv is doing its best to create a warm and loving Christmas mood for Ukraine’s children.
Several Santas brought Christmas presents to Kyiv’s major children’s hospital, Ohmatdyt, this week. “There are at least 720 children at our hospital. Many of them were wounded during the war,” the hospital’s head doctor, Volodymyr Zhovner, told The Daily Beast on Christmas day.
One of his patients, 13-year-old Katia, lost her mother to a missile strike on a railway station in Kramatorsk earlier this year. Katia was still weak and moving around in a wheelchair after her latest surgery earlier this month. During an air-raid alert, she moved into the hallway of the hospital—it’s safer to be between two walls, she said. “My hometown is under constant attacks, it’s too dangerous to return there,” Katia told The Daily Beast. “I currently have no home to go to, so my Christmas wish is to get my own apartment in Kyiv one day,” she added.
Source: Ukraine’s Littlest War Victims Brace For Russian Bombs on Christmas Day
