In Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine, Tetiana Kasian stops for a moment in the street. In front of her, a wall of artificial flowers and photos of smiling faces, those of victims killed since the start of the Russian invasion two months ago.
“It’s appalling. I might never have thought this would happen in Ukraine in the 21st century,” says the 32-year-old woman who helps displaced people.
Originally from Mariupol, she does not know “if she will be able to see her parents once more”, this martyred port city being almost entirely under Russian control following having been looted relentlessly since the beginning of March.
Several thousand people have died in Ukraine since February 24, including at least 2,224 civilians, according to the United Nations.
Among the dozens of photos showing a tiny fraction of the victims, that of an 11-year-old gymnast, Kateryna Diachenko. She was killed at her home in Mariupol by a Russian missile.
Next to it, that of the military paramedic Valentina Pouchich, who died trying to evacuate civilians near kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Further on, Naveen Gyanagoudar, an Indian student killed in Kharkiv, in the northeast, while he was going to look for food.
– “Wall of Hope” –
After the Orthodox Easter prayer on Sunday, dozens of passers-by stopped in front of this memorial.
Pink scarf tied around her hair, an old lady looks at the photos attentively and reads the identity of the victims.
Leo Soto, an American from Florida born in Venezuela, crossed the Atlantic to set up this memorial.
“It’s a wall of hope,” says the 27-year-old hospitality student, who once helped create a similar memorial in Miami last summer following a building collapsed that killed 98 people. including a classmate.
After this first well-received experience, he wanted to do his best to support the Ukrainians.
The young man chose artificial flowers, coming from Poland, so that they do not have to be replaced.
As he was tying their rods to the fence on Saturday, a uniformed soldier asked if he might post a photo of his brother, who was also killed.
He recounts seeing a funeral procession pass with a weeping mother walking behind the coffin draped in the Ukrainian flag. “It’s our daily life, it’s our reality.”
