Blinded by a Russian shell, this Ukrainian soldier couldn't see his wedding. But cried at new love
World
Blinded by a Russian shell, this Ukrainian soldier couldn’t see his wedding. But cried at new love
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Blinded by a Russian mortar shell, Ukrainian veteran Ivan Soroka couldn’t see his bride when she walked into his family home in a shoulderless white dress, a bouquet of white flowers in her right hand.
But when Vladislava Ryabets, 25, stepped toward him, Soroka wept with joy at the new chapter of life starting months after enemy artillery stole his sight.
“The first thing I said after I was wounded was, who will want me now?” said Soroka, 27, sitting inside his family home in a village in the outskirts of Kyiv.
“I succeeded in rebuilding myself,” he said. “I am seeing with my feelings, with my emotions.”
Dozens sat around a garden table in Bortnychi village under a tent decorated with balloons and garlands for a day of festivity steeped in Ukrainian rural tradition. Folk songs and laughter filled the air as neighbors and friends poured into the humble pastoral home, gulped drinks and toasted the young newlyweds. A round loaf decorated with viburnum berries — a symbol of fertility in local tradition — lay on the table.
Beneath the gaiety and carousing ran an undercurrent of anguish: The country remains locked in a ferocious war with Russia.
The Associated Press first met Soroka at a rehabilitation camp for ex-soldiers who lost their vision in combat. The courtship was not unusual in wartime Ukraine: Throughout the capital young men with prostheses hold hands with their partners and family members.
