Dozens gathered in Kyiv on Friday to party, determined to celebrate the coming of the new year and forget the tune of warning sirens and missile blasts that has dominated the past 10 months.
Dozens gathered in this dilapidated corner of Kyiv on Friday to party, determined to celebrate — if only for one DJ set — despite the destruction Russia continued to rain down ahead of 2023.
Dressed in a skin-tight black vinyl top, hot pants, tights, platform boots and black contact lenses, Ugly Boy looked every bit a holiday partygoer. But the timing of the event — day time on Friday, the day before New Year’s Eve — was unusual.
In a nod to the party’s patriotic underpinnings, the raving paused at one point for a blast of Ukraine’s national anthem. “For me and most of my friends nothing changed drastically after the full-scale invasion, because we were fighting even earlier,” Tamara said. “I was always afraid of war, but there’s a proverb — if you want peace, you have to be ready to fight for it.”
"This time, Russia’s mass missile attack is deliberately targeting residential areas, not even our energy infrastructure. War criminal Putin “celebrates” New Year by killing people," said Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba on Twitter. Russia has denied targeting civilians. “I’d like to remind everyone that mass gatherings are prohibited … furthermore we will severely and strictly react to people using pyrotechnics or fireworks,” said Ihor Klymenko, 50.Nelya Shestak, 51, said she had lost one of her two sons in the fighting and that the other was in Russian captivity.