Edition #120
01.04.2024
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Newsflash⚡ writes fictional stories behind today’s top headlines. This story was very easy to write after the storyville-style report from Sarah Rainsford. One of my favourite articles yet.
The streets of Ukraine and their unshakeable people, in today’s edition.
Estimated read time: 1.9 minutes.
Read the original article (Sarah Rainsford - BBC News)⚡⚡⚡
Barrage of Russian attacks aims to cut Ukraine's lights - BBC News
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My name is Mykola Khyvlovy. For forty-two years, I have been the person who turns on the lights.
Forty-two years. That is how long I have worked with electricity - lights, and things like this. Eleven years at home, in the Odesa region, where I also did my training, so add on six years to my number. Nine years in the north - the capital, Chernihiv and Sumy. Good, red soup there. Then twenty-two years in my home, the place I feel like is home, by the sea, in Mariupol.
I like the way the light looks on the water. There is something about its movement that is wholly invincible.
Since everything began, I have been the one tasked with a lot of the repairs. It’s good; we get to work quickly. Three hours, usually, is the time we wait after any damage. Most of my crew are also trained elsewhere - and like me, sometimes struggle with the different systems in each region - but between us, there is usually one person who is familiar enough to perform the repairs. Now that there are many less lights, there are many more workers. Yurii lost his entire farm. Sad as it is, it’s good that we are here - when people look at the damage, they first of all see us working. I think that is important.
A lot of the work happens at night. It happens when the air raid siren is not sounding, and it is slow but steady. It is harder to work in the pitch darkness - a street without lights, especially when you are harnessed above it, becomes like a shadowy valley without texture. It is difficult to describe; one has to have seen it to understand. We work with torches, and whatever enters the spotlight appears to pop suddenly and unrelatedly out of total blackness, which is quite a startling sensation. Not to mention the noise - the constant din of generators plugged into dark houses, rattling in the night like a distant, childish nightmare.
I worry for the people who walk these streets, on which people still live. Ukraine now is a strange kind of place. Yes, there is a war, and maybe new weaponry that will soon devastate us all. Maybe there are blackouts and windows get broken. But there are still lives to be led, still business to be done, people to see. I remembered this briefly when I met Natalia in the rain, at almost eight o’clock.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Hello, yes?”
“Could you shine your torch over there, please? I think there will be a puddle.”
The woman was already soaked, except for a small part of her hair and her face, the only things her umbrella had been able to protect in the storm.
“Of course, of course,” I said, and happily obliged. She began walking across the pavement carefully. “Do you have a long way to walk? It’s awful out here!”
“I know,” she said, laughing - more uncomfortable than frustrated - and added: “it could be worse. I could be the one fixing these lights.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not the only one out here. Besides, it seems tonight is going to be a quiet night.”
“A quiet night, yes,”
She was right, there had been a puddle. She had reached the end of it.
“Now, throw me your torch!” she said.
I laughed and shook my head. It was still incredibly, very cold.
“Be safe,” I called out, and turned back towards the motherboard units.
“We are better than that, you know,” she shouted, over her shoulder, walking away, and her voice now echoed from the shadows.
“We are invincible.”
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Read the original article (Sarah Rainsford - BBC News)⚡⚡⚡
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Barrage of Russian attacks aims to cut Ukraine's lights - BBC News
more from the war in Ukraine:
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disclaimer
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The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the author. The stories themselves are based on imagined events. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is fictitious and should not be taken as representative.
Read the full disclaimer.
CANADA/UKRAINE in top spot of NAZI LOVERS!? YANKS/BRITS in second spot!------Bill Blum wrote this in 2014--So why are you and others like you in mainstream media creating the same mentality that started the First World War (and the Cold War)?…….That is, demonizing Putin and Russia instead of showing the history and motivation of Western invasion and interference in Ukraine. Then ask why NATO even exists in a post Cold War world.------------------Late Bill Blum wrote a book called the ROGUE STATE. He had worked for USA government but left and became a writer etc!?!?
https://youtu.be/oCFcwAZhoJI?si=1Dj_cJl0k9cXkrCb
Above is what no one talks about ae people do not like the truth and facts but what only the perverse POLITICIANS/MSM churns out!? How many died between 2014 and the conflict going on now!?
Thought the puddle was going to turn grim but just an everyday puddle....like the ones on my street.