Ukrainian troops have been filmed painting flowers and messages on their missiles, before firing a volley of the munitions at Vladimir Putin‘s invading forces.
Kyiv‘s troops decorated the missiles with ‘warm’ messages for Ukraine’s World Embroidery Day, known as Vyshyvanka, which takes place on May 21.
The holiday – that is also celebrated in Belarus – promotes the tradition of creating and wearing embroidered Ukrainian clothes known as Vyshyvanka. A Vyshyvanka is a casual name for an embroidered shirt that is part of the country’s national costume.
The shirt was forbidden to be worn during the Soviet Union and was liberalized with the independence of Ukraine, and has become a symbol of defiance – and is more relevant than ever with Russia‘s on-going invasion of the country.
Video on Thursday showed Ukrainian service men and women carefully painting missiles with a variety of colourful patterns to mark the holiday – before launching them with deadly intent at Russian military positions.
One fighter painted three rockets with pink and blue flowers along its casing, and a message down the side. The soldier was then seen proudly laying the three missiles out in a row on the back of a Ukrainian military vehicle.
Another soldier was shown sitting on the same vehicle, parked under a tree, carefully painting his own message down the side of the same three missiles.
A female Ukrainian fighter was also shown carefully decorating her own missile. She wrote ‘Happy Vishivank’ in black marker, before decorating the shell with dozens of red cross-stitches to give the effect of an embroidered material.
The camera then panned along a row of several Ukrainian missiles, all ready to be launched in the direction of Russian forces.
More messages were painted down their sides. One said: ‘Greetings from Dchiv, pigs’, and was decorated with smirking emojis and a love heart.
The footage then cut to a Ukrainian serviceman loading a missile into an artillery gun, before covering his ears and firing the rocket into the air.
A Ukrainian rocket-launcher vehicle was then seen firing multiple rockets into the sky, also in the direction of Russian positions.
