Married in a Ukrainian bomb shelter

Yulia and Konstantine Khobodin weren’t supposed to get married in a bomb shelter.

They had planned a family wedding at a cafe in Kramatorsk, the east Ukraine city that became their adopted home after they fled fighting in Luhansk.

Yulia had a dress made. “It was a very simple dress with open back, it was very nice,” she said. “It was like my dream dress.”

Then Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 and they fled to a hotel in Dnipro.

In the midst of the war, they wondered if they should just marry then and there. How long could the fighting could last? They didn’t want to wait.

“Not everyone supported us,” Yulia said.

Some wondered whether it was appropriate to marry at such a time. They were living through the greatest disaster of their lives.

However, most of their friends encouraged them to go through with it, so they asked if it was permitted under martial law, and nobody objected.

On the big day, Yulia wore a hoodie with a UNICEF logo. Konstantine had on a zip-up sweater with blue, white and grey horizontal bands.

They filled out the paperwork at the Dnipro government office and were about to exchange vows when the air raid sirens began to wail.

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The threat of incoming airstrikes forced them to take shelter in a damp basement with cement walls, fluorescent lights, and ventilation pipes that ran along the ceiling.

But rather than waiting out the air raid, they carried on with their vows.

When the sirens sounded the all-clear, they emerged from the bunker as newlyweds.

“It was like, this is the best day of my life,” Yulia said.

After a month in Dnipro, the couple moved further from the fighting.

On Saturday, the date they were supposed to have married in Kramatorsk, they moved into a top floor apartment in Lviv, the city in western Ukraine that has taken in thousands fleeing the eastern frontlines.

But the war followed them.

At about 4:30 that afternoon, air raid sirens sounded in Lviv, followed by explosions. Russian missiles hit an oil storage facility, injuring five. Two hours later, more missiles struck, blowing out the windows at a kindergarten.

Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, was briefing reporters that night when his news conference was cut short by yet another air raid alert.

Sadovyi called the missiles a “hello” from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The attacks came as U.S. President Joe Biden was preparing to speak in nearby Poland.

Although parents were upset they couldn’t be there for the wedding, they were happy that Yulia and Konstantine would not be alone during such difficult days.

But it’s not easy to be lovers in a dangerous time. The worrying keeps them awake at night, particularly Russia’s recklessness around Ukraine’s nuclear power stations. Each morning breaks with more bad news.

“It’s really hard,” Konstantine said.

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