While locals donate blood for the injured and relatives of the missing provide DNA, glimmers of our normal life cling on
The city of Kremenchuk is looking for blood. Last week, two Russian missiles blew apart a large shopping and entertainment centre where around a thousand people were spending the afternoon. The exact number of those killed is still not known, but hundreds of people were at the epicentre of the explosion and of some of them, not even fragments are left. The number of wounded is known, though. The survivors were left without arms, without legs. And they need blood.
This tragedy has given a new impetus to blood donation efforts. Blood is needed everywhere in Ukraine – wherever Russian missiles and shells explode, wherever wounded soldiers are brought from the frontlines.
Andrey Kurkov is a Ukrainian novelist and author of Death and the Penguin
