Home of Ukraine Eurovision contestant destroyed by Russian shelling

Russian shelling has destroyed the home of a teenage Ukrainian Eurovision contestant a week before the competition begins.

Khrystyna Starykova, 19, posted photos and video on social media detailing her damaged apartment block in the city of Myrnograd of eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

The teenager is currently in Switzerland rehearsing for her performance with the band Ziferblat. Ms Starykova is a backing singer, affectionately known as "bird girl" as she handles the song's high notes.

Ms Starykova posted two photos of her apartment block shrouded in smoke and still partly on fire, alongside the captions “Home” with a broken heart emoji and “I dreamed so much of returning home”.

She added that she was determined to still perform at Eurovision next week, in Basel, “for the sake of our country”.

“I want to show what a strong people we are,” she wrote.

In an interview with Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne, Ms Starykova added that she had believed her home could be destroyed at any moment.

Her grandmother lost her home just four months ago and the roof of her aunt’s house was also destroyed.

Ms Starykova’s home is less than five miles from the frontline, next door to the city of Pokrovsk, a key aim of the Russian advance in Donetsk over the past year.

The teenager lived through fierce battles between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army from 2014 before the outbreak of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The vast majority of Myrnograd’s pre-war population of 46,000 have fled the city, which has been repeatedly hit by Russian shelling.

On Tuesday morning, Ms Starykova shared additional footage of the city’s bomb-damaged streets.

“I always went home from vocal lessons this way, she wrote in the caption. “It was my favourite way home.”

Ukraine’s Ziferblat will be singing Bird of Pray at this years Eurovision, a song telling the story of Ukrainians separated from their loved ones by the war.

"It's about our problems we go through, the tragedy for the last three years," singer Valentyn Leshchynskyi told Eurovision fansite Wiwibloggs. "To be honest, the last eleven years."