All posts tagged: Funerals and Memorials

In Ukraine, a Divisive 20th-Century Hero Comes Home

In Ukraine, a Divisive 20th-Century Hero Comes Home

With a Ukrainian military honor guard standing ramrod straight beside his coffin, Andriy Melnyk, a leader of a Ukrainian nationalist movement who died six decades ago — and who has been no less divisive after death than in life — lay in state in Kyiv before his reburial on Sunday. President Volodymyr Zelensky provided full state honors for the ritual, signaling a deep shift in Ukrainian politics after Russia’s invasion in 2022. Before then, Mr. Zelensky had kept nationalist politics at arm’s length; in the reburial, he embraced them. The remains of the long-dead World War II-era Ukrainian leader were exhumed in Luxembourg, where he had been buried after dying in exile in 1964, and returned to Ukraine. There was none of the raw grief of today’s war funerals. Melnyk led one of two factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, including through a period of alignment with the Nazi army during its occupation of Ukraine, which was one of the bloodiest chapters of World War II. The Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with …

Caught Flat-Footed, a City Races to Catch Up With Ebola

Caught Flat-Footed, a City Races to Catch Up With Ebola

Since an Ebola outbreak was declared in Bunia, a bustling city in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, global alarms have gone off. Borders have slammed shut, flights have been diverted as far as the United States and the Congolese World Cup team is currently in quarantine in Belgium. Yet here in Bunia, at the heart of the crisis, the usual signs of an organized response — large medical tents, medics in sealed white suits and goggles and patients lying in strict isolation — are not yet in place. Instead, the incipient aid effort is only getting set up. Outside Bunia’s main hospital on Saturday, workers hammered nails and pushed up tents a few yards from the main door, in a frantic scramble to erect a handful of isolation wards where patients can be triaged, isolated and treated. “The virus is far ahead of us,” said Ahmed Mahat, a manager with International Medical Corps, which is building two of the isolation wards. “And it’s spreading fast.” The world is playing catch-up in Congo. Caught flat-footed by …