Modesto’s sister city in Ukraine no longer untouched by atrocities of war
Just like that, the safety bubble that seemed to surround Modesto’s sister city in war-torn Ukraine has burst.
A favorite son of Khmelnytskyi, interior minister Denys Monastyrskyi, was killed Wednesday in a helicopter crash along with his ministry’s leadership and others, including a child on the ground when it plunged into a kindergarten in a Kyiv suburb.
That came only a couple of weeks after Khmelnytskyi (mel-NIT-ski) suffered its first casualty, 22-year-old Oksana Muzyka, who died in the hospital after long-range missiles reached the city on New Year’s Eve.
For readers of our print version of The Modesto Bee, the helicopter crash topped Thursday’s page 1A of the newspaper. The death of Monastyrskyi, 42, is a big deal reported the world over, and he is a proud product of our sister city.
Positioned as it is in western Ukraine, far from intense fighting to the east, Khmelnytskyi had been a relative haven from violence that has wrecked the country’s east and other more strategic targets. Aside from a nearby airfield obliterated near the start of the war in February, Khmelnytskyi —one of seven sister cities to Modesto in various countries — had mostly been left alone.
Innocence lost
Any sense of innocence was shattered Dec. 31 when rockets slammed into two Khmelnytskyi targets, leaving a gas station engulfed in flames and splintering barracks used by military units similar to our National Guard. The missiles also took out eight transport vehicles, 13 houses and warehouse facilities, according to Ukrinform, a multimedia broadcasting platform.
Eight people were injured in the Khmelnytskyi attack, including Muzyka, who died a day later. She had worked as a junior associate for PwC Ukraine, a consulting firm providing “assurance, tax, legal and advisory services,” according to its website.
Before her death, our sister city seemed blessed with a strange protection, almost shielded from the death, destruction and atrocities elsewhere in Ukraine. I suppose we knew the charm could not last forever.
Monastyrskyi’s high-profile death made headlines around the world, not because he’s from Khmelnytskyi but because he was the highest-ranking Ukrainian government official killed so far.
Born and raised in our sister city, Monastyrskyi practiced law and taught law and management at a university in Khmelnytskyi before joining the Cabinet of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July 2021, a few months before the Russian invasion.
Another native son of Khmelnytskyi, Sergei Samborski, came to Modesto in 1991. Daily, he discusses war developments on the phone with loved ones there, and friends in the Ukrainian government, and he has been an open and reliable source of information for this column.
The long-range rockets that hit his hometown, killing Muzyka, were fired from planes flying far away over the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, Samborski said.
He spoke with his sister during a Jan. 14 air attack on Kyiv as she took shelter in a bathroom without windows that might shatter, and asked how she was doing. “`Well, I’ve been reading for an hour,’” she told him, “`but I might as well shower and wash my hair.’ We had a good laugh at that,” Samborski said.
“People are not panicking. You have to admire the spirit.”
This story was originally published January 19, 2023 at 10:12 AM.
