A few days ago a video of a young woman singing somewhere in the tunnels and basements beneath the sprawling Azovstal steel plan in Mariupol went viral around the world. Surrounded on all sides by the Russians, vastly outnumbered and bombarded constantly, the scene is drawing comparisons with the Battle of the Alamo as they make their last stand.
As the twenty-one-year-old combat medic sings in the song above, "The sweeter to die in battle/than to live on as slaves."
Source: Daily Mail
The shaky video picks out the woman leading the singing in the darkness, her clear voice imbuing the patriotic songs with an exquisite beauty that belies the desolation of her surroundings.
For she is singing in a bomb shelter amid the shattered hell of Mariupol, accompanied by a low murmur from a chorus line of men sitting beside her.
Her name is Kateryna. She joined the army last year after completing her music studies and, at the age of 21, she finds herself fighting for her life as a member of the heroic band of Ukrainian fighters making a desperate last stand in a besieged factory.
Her sublime singing on the extraordinary video – shot somewhere in the warren of tunnels and basements beneath the sprawling Azovstal steel plant on the outskirts of the port city – has become a social media hit in Ukraine.
A new video has a somewhat more hopeful message. "I'm not a star. Stars burn but we will live forever."
