It wasn’t the wedding day they imagined, but when Russia attacked their country on Thursday, Yaryna Arieva and her partner Sviatoslav Fursin rushed to get married with the sound of air raid sirens in their ears.
“That was very frightening,” said Arieva, who was married at the monastery of St. CNN On thursday.
“It’s the happiest moment of your life, you go out and hear it,” said Arieva, a deputy for the Kiev City Council.
The couple planned to get married on May 6 and celebrate at a restaurant with a “very, very cute terrace” overlooking the Dnieper River, Arieva said.
“Just us, the river and beautiful lights,” said the 21-year-old.
But that all changed when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine on Thursday, and the attack began hours before dawn with a series of missile strikes.
The crisis quickly spread through central and eastern Ukraine as Russian forces attacked the country from three sides, impacting the lives of millions of Ukrainians.
‘Let’s fight for our land’
The couple, who met in October 2019 at a protest in central Kiev, decided they wanted to get married because they’re not sure what the future holds.
“The situation is difficult. We will fight for our land,” Arieva said. “Maybe we can die, and we just wanted to be together before all this.”
After the wedding, Arieva and Fursin, a 24-year-old software engineer, prepared to go to the local Territorial Defense Center to join forces to help defend the country.
“We have to protect her. We have to protect the people we love and the land we live on,” she said. “I hope for the best, but I do what I can to protect my land.”
Arieva does not know which task will be assigned to the couple. “Maybe they’ll give us armor and we’ll fight. Maybe we can help with something else. They will decide,” she said.
Arieva has described her husband as her “closest friend on Earth” and says she hopes they can celebrate their marriage one day.
“Maybe they (Russia) will leave our country and we can celebrate normally,” Arieva said. “I just hope that everything goes normal and we have our land, we will have our country safe and happy without any Russian agents.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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