The smell of oranges and roast duck wafts through the metal doors of a small barn as Oksana Kovtun prepares the final touches for her family’s Christmas dinner.
As she hurried from the annex into the warm, modular cottage carrying the bird toward the table, a thin layer of snow dust settled on the collapsed walls and debris scattered in the middle of her yard. .
That’s all that remains of her family’s home in Makariv, destroyed by shelling this past spring when the Russians failed to capture the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, about 30 miles away.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Christmas this year falls on a Saturday – the church still uses the Julian calendar, instead of the newer Gregorian calendar – and a hearty family meal takes place on Christmas Eve. Friday was the first Christmas Eve experienced by the Kovtuns during the war, who now live next to their dilapidated home in a donated makeshift building.
Ms Kovtun, 49, said that with one of her sons serving in the army in the east and having no permanent home, the past few months have felt like punishment.
“But there was nothing else we could do, we had to move on,” she added. “You can sit and cry, but then you get up and get to work. And so it is.”
The Kovtuns are one of countless Ukrainian families that celebrate the holiday under completely new circumstances. Many people have damaged homes; many others have been displaced entirely or have fled the country as refugees.
Even in areas that were never near the front lines, the celebration took place amid difficulty and uncertainty, after weeks of Russian force attacks on vital civilian infrastructure that crippled the ability to stable electricity, heat and water supply capacity of Ukraine.
Such conditions can make the Christmas Eve meal both an act of defiance and a demonstration of resilience. In the Kovtuns modular house, the electricity was cut off two hours before dinner started. But the flashlight was close at hand.
The youngest of the family, Ms. Kovtun’s 7-year-old grandson, David, struck a match to light a candle on the table with one’s nimble hands that became a nightly ritual for them.
“Now you can’t really call it a house,” said Viktor Kovtun, Kovtun’s husband, of the tiny prefab building, which is divided into three rooms. Mr. Kovtun, 53, explained that without electric heating, it would cool down quickly, lighting a gas fireplace instead. “But we will rebuild,” he said of the family’s lost home.
This isn’t the first time they’ve redone their nearly three-decade home. “When we bought it, it just had walls and roof, no windows, doors or floors,” Ms. Kovtun said of the house they bought in 1997. “And we built it. and build.”
They raised two sons there, then added there to make room for their daughter-in-law and finally their grandson – three generations under one roof. They have more work planned as their son Mykhailo, 22, is expected to return from military service last year. He enlisted in the army in 2021.
But just days after they finished renovating the kitchen in February, Russian forces occupied Makariv as they invaded Ukraine from the north. The battles between the Ukrainian and Russian armies quickly engulfed the area.
“There were no sirens, no warnings, we just heard shelling,” said Tetiana Kovtun, 30, married to the couple’s eldest son, Vitalii, also 30. They barely had time to grab some belongings while on the run.
Weeks later, on March 16, artillery shells pierced the wall of the elderly couple’s bedroom. A second rocket crashed into another wall. The subsequent shelling and fire nearly leveled the house, and the family dog was killed.
But Kovtun’s grief is intertwined with optimism. She escaped the town safely from the devastating attack, along with her husband, Vitalii, Tetiana, and David. Weeks later, Russian forces were toppled and the family finally returned to survey the damage.
They found their house in ruins, but an outbuilding – a barn with a small kitchen – remained. So the couple moved there for a while.
“When we arrived and had to live in the barn, I said, ‘It doesn’t matter what conditions we live in if it’s a home,’” Ms. Kovtun said. “Home is home.”
Their modular building arrived in November, donated by a Ukrainian charity as part of a program called Nest built 585 houses in the Makariv area alone. It has made it possible for the family to live on the spot while they try to rebuild.
Just before Christmas Eve dinner, Ms. Kovtun’s phone rang. It’s Mykhailo. His father’s face lit up, and David rushed to the phone to shout Merry Christmas to his uncle. Mykhailo – a chef in the army who now served during the war – described the dinner he was making for his soldiers.
Ms. Kovtun said that when her sons were young, she would send them out to find the first Christmas star in the sky before they started their meal, an Orthodox tradition. Now, David, Kovtun’s grandson, has embarked on the search as the family gathers for dinner.
Just a few days ago, on New Year’s Eve, the whole family looked together in horror at the night sky, their eyes drawn to the unmistakable humming of several Iranian-made drones. Russian forces launch. They were most likely destined for Kiev, part of the great Russian offensive as the new year begins. Many people were stopped, however: Vitalii showed video of the explosions on his mobile phone as the whole family gathered in the small kitchen.
The 12 traditional dishes served on Christmas Eve filled the Kovtun family’s modest table, and David helped his grandmother count them one by one. The first dish they served was kutya, a traditional dish made with wheat berries, poppy seeds, nuts, raisins, and honey.
Some of the plates the family used were taken from the ruins of their home, among the few that remained.
The family recipe book was lost in the fire, so this year Ms. Kovtun made many traditional dishes from memory.
Next year, Mr. Kovtun said he hopes the family will spend Christmas in their newly rebuilt home. They plan to start work in the spring.
It was the work that kept the family busy and distracted the Kovtuns from what they had to endure. Miss Kovtun eased her mind by telling herself that perhaps the house was simply the price her family had to pay in this war.
Maybe it will prevent something worse.
“But when we rebuild the house, we will have a big party there. I would get drunk and then I would start crying and I would cry for the pain, down to the last drop of it,” she said. “Now, there’s no time to cry.”
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn and Natalia Yermak contribution report.
