Kyiv honors the memory of Lyubomira Kepler, who left Germany for the Maidan
Today, April 28, Kyiv is bidding farewell to Lyubomyra Kepler (Khoptiy), a participant in the Revolution of Dignity, volunteer, and civic activist. She passed away on April 24. During the violent dispersal of the protest on the night of November 30, 2013, Lyubomyra Kepler was injured by Berkut officers.
This is reported by Glavkom.
According to the Lawyers’ Advisory Group, in November 2013, when the first protests began in Ukraine, Lyubomyra Kepler was living in Germany with her husband. However, she could not remain a passive observer. As early as November 27, having packed a suitcase with medical supplies, she flew to Kyiv. As a doctor, she immediately went to volunteer at the medical tent on Maidan. Just a few days later, on the night of the dispersal of protesters on November 30, 2013, Lyubomyra Kepler became one of the victims of the brutal and illegal actions of the Berkut officers.
“I ran out of the tent onto the street; people were standing by the monument and singing the national anthem. When I ran up, there were already a lot of people and it was very tense. I stood on the second step from the bottom because people had already surrounded the monument. A few more people ran up in front of me. And then suddenly they started coming down… what followed was a horror movie I can’t bear to watch. There was no off switch to change the channel. I won’t go into those details because it was terrifying. It was very humiliating that I, a grown woman, couldn’t stop it,” Lyubomyra later recounted.
At one point, one of the Berkut officers approached her and broke her right arm with a baton.
“I went to the tent where my backpack with documents was. I didn’t care about my hand because it was horrible, it was humiliating, it was intimidation. If they had wanted to kill us, they would have done so. They wanted to humiliate and intimidate us,” Lyubomyra Kepler recalled later.
With a cast on her arm, the doctor continued to go to Maidan regularly; she even stood in the human chain on the night of the assault from February 18 to 19, 2014, passing cobblestones to the front line of the defense.
After the Revolution of Dignity, Lyubomyra Kepler actively volunteered, knitted nets, knitted, and helped the wounded. She also spent many years going to court, hoping to secure just punishment for those guilty of the beatings. She was deeply hurt by the news that the cases against most of the defendants had been closed due to the statute of limitations.
Lyubomyra’s family is calling on everyone who knew her, even for just a moment, to come and accompany her along her “traditional routes”—from her home on DVRZ to Maidan and on to the Baikove Cemetery.
At 11:00 a.m., the funeral procession carrying Lyubomyra will stop at her home (39a Almatynska St.). A small bus will be available for those who wish to travel to Maidan.
At 12:30 p.m. – a farewell ceremony at Maidan, near the Memorial. Buses will also be organized from there to Baikove.
At 3:30 PM – a farewell ceremony in the main hall of the Baikove Cemetery (16 Baikova St.).
At 5:00 PM, friends and family will return to the courtyard of her home—they will finish the lacework she started but didn’t have time to complete, and share stories about her.
Lyubomyra Kepler did not like artificial flowers, so her loved ones ask that only fresh flowers be brought to the farewell.
As a reminder, the Zelenskys attended the funeral service for Patriarch Filaret.
Earlier, Kyiv bid farewell to Patriarch Filaret.
The farewell to Patriarch Filaret in Kyiv lasted three days.
