18-year-old artist Veronika Kozhushko killed in Russian attack on Kharkiv
Pravda Ukraine
An 18-year-old artist, Veronika Kozhushko, was killed in a Russian airstrike with guided bombs on Kharkiv on 30 August.
Source: Ukrainian writer, musician and soldier Serhii Zhadan on Facebook
Quote: “Today, during the attack on Kharkiv, Nika Kozhushko – very young, sincere, and gifted – was killed. An hour before her death, she sent her new drawing. That is her last drawing.
The Russians continue to destroy our future. There is no explanation for this. And no forgiveness either,” wrote Zhadan.
The death of the young woman was also reported by her girlfriend, artist Arina Nikolenko. She posted a video of Veronika jumping on a trampoline at the opening of an exhibition at the YermilovCentre a day earlier.
Quote: “She was an artist, a poet, passionate about Ukrainian culture, and much more… and, among other things, she was my girlfriend. About an hour ago, I saw her dead in the hospital. She was killed during the attack. The Russians killed her,” wrote Arina.
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Veronika Kozhushko was actively involved in the creative life of Kharkiv. She painted tote bags with portraits of Ukrainian writers and created illustrations for lines from the poems of Serhii Zhadan and Mykhailo Semenko [a Ukrainian poet and leading figure of Ukrainian futurist poetry in the 1920s, and a key member of the Executed Renaissance– ed.].
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On her Instagram page, Veronika regularly organised fundraisers to support the needs of Ukrainian soldiers.
Literary scholar Yaryna Tsymbal shared that she met the young Kharkiv resident when she came to film her home concert at the Slovo building [built in the late 1920s, it housed Ukrainian writers and poets, many later executed by Communist authorities as part of the Executed Renaissance – ed.].
Quote: “They arrived a little earlier: three young girls and a boy. They were having a photo session featuring Nika’s tote bags and postcards. Depicted on them were Derzhprom, Slovo building, Semenko, [Mykola] Khvylovyi [a Ukrainian novelist, poet, and political activist, a key figure in post-revolutionary Ukrainian literature and the Ukrainian Renaissance of the 1920s–1930s – ed.], and [Les] Kurbas [a leading Ukrainian theatre director and avant-garde artist, executed during Stalin’s Great Terror – ed.]. [Derzhprom is an office building located on Freedom Square in Kharkiv. It was the first modern skyscraper building in the Soviet Union – ed.]
Nika was so delicate, so young, like a child. And very talented. We talked at the Slovo building and at the Literary Museum; she was so pleased that I liked her work, as if it were something unusual. I was delighted with the new acquaintance in Kharkiv, her youth, and her talent,” Tsymbal shares.
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Olena Rybka, Deputy Chief Editor of Vivat Publishing, also recalls her acquaintance with Veronika Kozhushko.
Quote: “She is 18. She is delicate and entirely beautiful. Each time we crossed paths in the city, I was captivated by her. Such a ray of light, yet a very strong one. She is 18. She paints. She feels things very deeply. And it seems she doesn’t fully realise how much she has within her.
She looks at the world with love-struck eyes. She has an irony that only someone like her can have. When she and her friend run to hug each other, I hug them very gently, as if they might float away like dandelions – so much lightness they have. Maybe to avoid floating away, Nika wore all those metal pins and rings… I can’t accept this loss,” she writes on Facebook.
Background: The Russians attacked Kharkiv with guided bombs on 30 August. One of the strikes hit a 12-storey residential building in the central part of Kharkiv. As of the morning of 31 August, there are reports that 97 people were injured, including 22 minors.
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