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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Ukrainian poet, composer, and public figure Yevhen Rybchynskyi commented on the changes in Kyiv over four and a half years. He posted the remarks on Facebook.
"At the end of March 2022 I returned to Kyiv from Volyn, where I had been serving in the territorial defense. Kyiv looked post-apocalyptic: no cars or people in the center, empty store shelves, not a single beggar on the streets, and almost no birds. Checkpoints everywhere and torn-down or painted-over street name signs. And the state language was everywhere and in everything," the poet and producer wrote.
He described how Kyiv changed over those four and a half years.
"Millions of victims and tens of millions of lives maimed, new rich people 'on blood,' stores full of goods, fancy cars, tens of thousands of professional beggars, hordes of crows, and a Russian-speaking renaissance on the streets," Rybchynskyi noted.
He also mentioned call-center scams that cheated elderly people, including his parents. He also recalled singer Nastia Kamenskykh, who disgraced herself by saying that singing in Ukrainian had caused her to develop a cyst.
"One beggar, to whom today I gave my last paper money (the rest is on cards), stunned me. 'You used to be kinder,' she said. I only wished her health. And I thought to myself: as a nation we hold on only because of our defense forces, to whom we keep donating, knowing that allied aid they may not see. And, to be honest, back then, in February–March 2022, it was scary, but it wasn't shameful. And the beggars back then mostly fled west, and NK then the cyst still didn't interfere with speaking Ukrainian," Rybchynskyi added.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item ""Тоді ще кіста не заважала". Рибчинський відреагував на ганебне інтерв'ю Каменських". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Gordon.
