Ukraine’s youth are ready to party – but with a wartime twist – The Irish Times

They put on their pink, orange and green sunglasses. From the cupboards came high platform shoes, short black skirts, leather leggings and metal jewelry.

They were hip, young and beautiful, and ready to party on a recent balmy summer evening in a dramatic setting – a bombed-out ruin of a war-damaged building littered with debris.

They were brought together by the group Repair Together, which hopes to revive the famous Ukrainian rave scene from before the invasion, but with a wartime twist: doing good while having fun.

Andriy Diachenko, whose stage name is DJ Recid, spun the tunes. And the crowd of twenty-somethings – dressed in their best nightclub finery – pushed wheelbarrows, shoveled rubble and swept up dust, all nodding and swaying to the beat.

“Right now it doesn’t seem appropriate to go clubbing,” said Tetyana Burianova (26), one of the rave’s organizers and an avid partygoer of pre-war Kyiv nightlife. “I want to go back to my old life, but only after the war. As long as there is war, my life, like that of everyone else, is only a matter of volunteering.

Repair Together activists, originally from Kyiv, had no party in mind when they began soliciting local volunteers to repair destroyed buildings in villages outside the capital, in areas liberated this spring from the Russian occupation. Volunteers removed debris and made small repairs. The group would then post their work on Instagram to try to encourage more people to help.

After each cleanup, activists would hold a concert or other entertainment, often for children. Residents – exhausted from five months of relentless shelling and missile fire – were enthusiastic. This is how Repair Together decided to combine music creation with repair work.

The idea of ​​a rave was born.

Burianova said the group hopes to clean up 25 buildings with rave parties before winter arrives. The recent celebration, in Yahidne, a village north of Kyiv, was the first.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of cleaning sites and their number is increasing every day. As of August 8, around 131,000 buildings in Ukraine had been destroyed by Russian bombing and missile strikes, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. The Ministry of Culture estimates that around 65 village cultural clubs have been destroyed. These resemble community centers and in many villages before the war often held disco parties every Friday night.

For many of the nearly 200 revelers who showed up for the rave in the destroyed Culture House in Yahidne, it was the first time in months that they had put on party clothes.

“I haven’t played for five months,” said DJ Recid, who once played at Kyiv’s ultra-popular No Name club. “It’s the best rave I can imagine right now,” he said. “We dance together and we fix together.”

Yahidne, a village in the Chernihiv region, was occupied by Russian forces on March 3 and liberated by the Ukrainian army on March 31. Many houses in the village were destroyed, but the occupation is also known for a particularly sinister episode.

While the Russians controlled the village, more than 300 people, including 77 children, were trapped in a damp basement of the village school. They served as a human shield for the Russian troops based there. Ten of the captives died.

Many Yahidne villagers were grateful to see the activists hold the recent rave.

“You feel the village is not empty when they are here,” said Viktoria Hatsura (29), whose son was also helping clean up the rubble. Together with her three children, she spent almost a month in captivity in the basement during the Russian occupation.

She said she was happy to see so many young people willing to bring positive emotions and help her village.

Other Yahidne residents praised the effort, but not the techno music. “I can’t say that I like music, but I am grateful to these children for their work,” said Oksana Yatsenko (42), who lives near the House of Culture.

Before the war, Kyiv parties had become known far beyond the borders of Ukraine. Raves in industrial facilities, semi-derelict buildings, clubs, and outdoors on river banks were held regularly. Now the destroyed villages are the backdrop.

At the Yahidne party site, black scorch marks marred the red brick walls of the House of Culture, which has no roof. In the middle of the dance floor, there was a pile of rubble.

The crowd, holding shovels and buckets, nodded emphatically and stomped along to the beat, filling the buckets and bags. The DJ played on a stage decorated with a curtain of garlands, floating and sparkling in the sun. The speakers were perched on tripods amid the rubble. All around there was a lot of exposed brickwork. Local children came to help.

“I was still clubbing before the war,” said Solomiya Yaskiv, 23, an advertising manager at a Kyiv tech company. “Right now there are almost no parties in Kyiv and anyway I’m not mentally ready for them. It’s different here. I can enjoy cool music again and watch stylish people and beautiful, while doing something useful.—This article originally appeared in the New York Times

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