Another change in the environment around my artwork, which is somehow still holding on after russia’s latest massive terrorist attack on Kyiv. As the world keeps caring less and less, genocidal freaks are now openly threatening to destroy our capital with missiles. ____________

Sonia Twigg at Roland Garros - The Telegraph

Marta Kostyuk cries after first-round victory and shows a photo of the damage in Kyiv on her phone

Ukrainian tennis player Marta Kostyuk burst into tears after winning her first-round match at the French Open and said a Russian missile narrowly missed her parents’ house.

Kostyuk showed a photo of the damage on her phone at a press conference, pointing out her parents’ house among the smoke and fires engulfing a nearby apartment complex.

“Most of the morning I felt sick just for the thought that if it was 100 metres closer, I probably wouldn’t have a mum and a sister today,” Kostyuk said.

“It was really difficult to just process it so quick and also go out and play. That’s why I’m also very happy that I played [the] first match, because I don’t know what would be the outcome if I played last, for example."

“It’s tough, but I’m very proud of myself today, of how we all handled it, and, you know, happy to be in the second round and that everyone is alive.”

All throughout her 6-2, 6-3 win over Russian-born Oksana Selekhmeteva, Kostyuk’s mind would return back to the near miss on her family’s home in Kyiv, on a night of bombing where 90 missiles and 600 drones killed four and injured around 100 across the country.

Her mother, sister and great aunt were at the residence in Ukraine’s capital city, on one of the most difficult days for Kostyuk since the war began in 2024.

“It was just the closest that it has ever been to my house, and this is what probably makes it the most emotional,” she said.

“There are obviously, as I said, there are better days, worse days, but yeah, this one was, I would say top-three worst ones, for sure.”

Although she had not been able to talk to her family on the phone at the time of the press conference, she had been in contact via text with her friends and family who are trying to get some sleep after a restless night.

In the Darnytskyi district, a dormitory building, several non-residential premises, a service station and cars parked near a residential building were damaged by falling UAV and missile debris.

In the Obolonskyi district, a UAV hit a private 1-story residential building. Also, a UAV hit a 3-story residential building near an open area, causing a fire. Also in the same district, a fire broke out in a 16-story residential building.

In the Shevchenkivskyi district, two residential buildings and an office center were damaged by falling missile debris, and cars in the parking lot also caught fire. Fires also broke out in two schools due to falling debris.

In the Dnipro district, debris fell on the roof of a residential building. Also, a fire broke out as a result of a UAV hitting a private residential building. In addition, a warehouse building and a garage cooperative were damaged.

In Svyatoshynskyi district, missile fragments fell on a 1-story private residential building.

In Podilskyi, debris fell on the territory of non-residential buildings.

In Holosiivskyi district, missile fragments fell on the roof of a 24-story residential building.

In Desnyanskyi, UAV fragments hit a supermarket and shopping center building.

In Solomyanskyi district, a UAV hit the 23rd floor of a 24-story residential building, causing a fire and destruction of structural elements.

In Pecherskyi district, a fire broke out as a result of a UAV hitting a 20-story residential building.

There may be people under the rubble. The search and rescue operation continues.

Residential buildings and civil infrastructure in several districts of the city were damaged.

In Darnytskyi district, a multi-storey residential building was hit, where structures collapsed. 10 people were rescued, emergency rescue operations are underway to search for the injured. At another address, debris was recorded falling onto the territory of a gas station.

In Solomyanskyi district, a parked car caught fire.

In Holosiivskyi district, debris was found on the roadway.

In Svyatoshynskyi district, debris was recorded falling onto an open area.

In Obolonskyi district, debris was recorded falling onto an open area and onto a three-storey parking lot and business center. Also at another address, debris damaged an apartment in a residential building on the 12th floor and hit a 25th-story unfinished building, there are injured people.

In the Dniprovskyi district, as a result of the attack, a fire broke out on the roof of a five-story residential building. One injured person was found. At another, a UAV hit a five-story building. Damage to a private residential building was also recorded. At another address, as a result of the attack, several garages and a parked car caught fire.

Search and rescue operations are ongoing.

This is the fifth person killed in the Russian night attack on the capital.

Clearing the rubble of a damaged building in the Darnytskyi district of the capital continues.

The search and rescue operation has been completed. It lasted more than 28 hours.

🎶⚔️🎶

She wasn’t actually her, but the hairstyle and the color of her hair were so similar that I caught myself thinking:

“huh, how strange it is sometimes, how a single familiar detail can make you feel like you somehow know another person too, and because of that it becomes hard not to feel yourself somewhere nearby with them, in the same situation”.

That mother, after a Russian strike hit a residential building, stood for hours watching the rubble being cleared. By afternoon, my own mother told me that her daughter had stayed in contact until the very last moment, but after another collapse, the signal disappeared. The parents held on to hope for a miracle until the very end.

I recognize a voice that sounds like that of a friend I once had — in a completely different girl. She’s with a guy whose tone even reminds me of the one she used to date back then, the one I never really got along with — and the one she later cried to me about after their messy breakup, before getting back together with him again.

They are trying to evacuate from a building, around which strikes and interceptions are still happening. He tries to shield her with his body and calm her frightened voice, which in some distant way reminds me of how my friend used to react to horror movies — but she never sounded like this, not with this real, cold terror.

I realize that I actually don’t know at all how that friend of mine reacts to explosions at night or during the day. We haven’t spoken in a long time, even before the full-scale invasion began.

In a way, none of us truly knows each other, but I’ve heard both of them in some of the harder moments of their lives.

This frame is familiar to me too — like the ones I used to take after walks with friends, to later set as my phone wallpaper or post to my stories.

I don’t recognize this extra element in the sky, although by now it is more familiar than something I wouldn’t know.

I don’t recognize anyone in this frame.

I recognize the building — one of many old historical structures across the city. But I don’t know exactly where it is.

The fire from the strike looks far more familiar to me.

I recognize the square in the city center very well, but I don’t know these people — just some volunteers who came to plant a tree.

I wish I could recognize more people in moments like this.

My hometown has been under occupation since 2014. My parents probably already have russian citizenship, because you can't survive there otherwise. But I don't ask them about it.

The town most dear to my heart is now in ruins, and Ukraine is slowly losing ground there - but, more importantly, lives. So it has become another cemetery, a concrete desert among many others, like I knew it would. The frontline has now reached the little village where I spent the first few years of my life, and which I still see in my dreams sometimes, however fuzzy - a little house on the hill, summer, tall grass (it probably seemed way taller because I was so small), my great grandma and I harvesting berries in a raspberry patch, a tapestry with deer on it in the summer house. None of it exists anymore, or ever will again.

I saw some war footage with russians hiding in a graveyard, probably somewhere in those parts. It could have been one of countless little graveyards, but for some reason, for the first time, I imagined my great-grandma's grave being uprooted by a missile, and that thought made me sick.

Thinking about any of it makes me sick. I don't think I can feel the normal spectrum of human emotions regarding the war anymore. It's either sickness or nothingness.

Living in Donetsk, in 2016 or so, I remember thinking - it'll be over soon, it can't go on much longer. In 2021, I faced the truth - it's not going to end. I need to leave and try to start over, so I did. In 2026, I'm trying not to think about anything. Not to count years. Not to plan. Not to stare too long as elderly mothers bring flowers to the portraits of their fallen sons and wipe stains off their photograph faces. Because thinking about any of it, looking at it, is unbearable, and only gets worse as time goes on.

“I have a quote by Lina Kostenko written on my helmet: ‘Where there is heroism, there is no final defeat.’ They banned it. They said it was a political slogan, that it was about war, that it wasn’t allowed. I translated it for them word for word — no, it’s a political slogan. These are simply motivational words for me, for my team, and for my country. Why not? ‘Not allowed, it’s political, it’s propaganda.’”

I’ll say something that might sound controversial, but this whole situation with the 2026 Olympics increasingly reminds me of how Ukrainians were treated during the Soviet Union, when any Ukrainian position was banned and there were always “reasons” given: it discriminates against others, it violates equality, it makes Russians uncomfortable — meaning, ahem, it’s chauvinism, it’s an expression of aggressive Ukrainian nationalism, and so on.

“Oleh’s story repeats the experience of Ukrainian freestyle skier Kateryna Kotsar, whose helmet was banned because of the inscription ‘Be brave like Ukrainian.’”

And while on one side there is pressure from the International Olympic Committee, on the other side additional organizations get involved — institutions where, much like in key Soviet structures, Ukrainians simply are not represented. Yet it isn’t difficult to understand who is represented there, and with what views toward us — and this time it is the International Skating Union (ISU).

“My career right now is okay, but the future… ISU doesn’t really favor us, in my opinion. Because we have no representatives in ISU. I don’t like that we don’t have anyone there at all. So we don’t have support, and they can do whatever they want with us. And I was made to understand that it would be better not to do this for the sake of my future career. No, this wasn’t the IOC — it was specifically the ISU who banned it.”

Ukrainian athletes are currently being treated like dissidents within a hostile system, where any position is seen as a protest. And so we see a similar dissident behavior from Ukrainians like quickly pinned notes with words written on their palms.

So I’m just waiting for the infamous words to be said:

“A Ukrainian has been condemned for Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.”

meanwhile, the orange rapist: "putin promised me he wouldn't bomb Ukraine during this coldest week. he agreed to do me that favor. what a great guy!"