Russian rockets hit the hometown of Ukrainian electro-pop duo Tvorchi during their Eurovision performance, officials in Kyiv said late on Saturday.

After the couple took to the stage in the city of Liverpool in northern England, Ternopil, a small city in western Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, the head of the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a Telegram message what happened.

“It happened just at the moment when the Ukrainian group “Tvorchi” from Ternopil performed in the Eurovision final,” he said, adding that two people were injured.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said two people were injured in a “rocket attack” in a separate post on its Telegram channel. According to preliminary data, the couple received “shrapnel wounds and burns.”

According to the report, “fragments of a cruise missile hit the warehouses, causing a fire.”

In a later statement, the Ukrainian Air Force on Sunday said three cruise missiles and 25 drones were destroyed during the attack.

NBC News is unable to independently verify these claims.

Following his speech at an event in Liverpool, which took over the holding of the event after the organizers decided that Kyiv was not safe enough, Creativity spoke about the attack in a post on his Instagram channel.

“Ternopil is the name of our hometown, which was bombed by Russia while we sang on the Eurovision stage about our steel hearts, indomitability and will,” they wrote, adding that the post is dedicated to “all the cities of Ukraine that are bombed every day” . day.

The sights and sounds of Ukraine were featured throughout the show, starting with the opening film, which saw the 2022 Eurovision winners the Kalush Orchestra sing and dance in the Kiev metro, and the tune was picked up by musicians from the UK, including Katherine, Princess of Wales, who was featured playing the piano.

As a result, Creativity took sixth place in the competition, which was won by the Swedish singer Loreen, who performed her song “Tatu”. She became the first singer to win the competition twice.

The Russian Ministry of Defense later confirmed that it had attacked Ternopil in a statement released on its Telegram channel on Sunday, saying it “delivered a strike with air- and sea-based long-range precision weapons.” He added that he was targeting storage sites for “ammunition, weapons and military equipment obtained from Western countries.”

The attack came after Zelenskiy traveled to Rome, where he met with Pope Francis and Prime Minister Georgia Meloni.

He then traveled to Berlin on Sunday for a meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

There, he thanked Germany for its announcement on Saturday that it would provide Ukraine with nearly $3 billion worth of military aid, including tanks, anti-aircraft systems and ammunition.

“You can rely on Germany,” he wrote on Twitter. “Together we bring the world closer!”

Inside Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces had made “massive attempts” to breach defenses in the key eastern town of Bakhmut over the past 24 hours as pressure continued to mount on their forces.

It said that Ukraine attacked the north and south of the city, but did not break through the Russian defenses. “All attacks by units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been repelled,” the message says.

NBC News was unable to verify this claim.

This raised new doubts about the Kremlin’s hopes for a symbolic victory in the city and heightened the fears of Russian observers about the position of the military on the front line.

For months, Russia has been anticipating a Ukrainian spring counter-offensive that is expected to target occupied lands across the country. Moscow’s own winter offensive ended in public infighting as it suffered heavy casualties on the battlefield, with more than 100,000 Kremlin forces killed or wounded since December alone, according to US estimates.

Associated Press contributed.

TueWhen I was a child in communist Albania, happiness was called Anyushka. Anyushka was a big Czechoslovakian doll that belonged to my neighbors. They were party members who were once allowed to go to Prague and brought Anyushka to decorate their bedroom. It was not on sale in any Albanian store.

She had thick black hair pulled back into a chignon and wore an imperial orange satin dress adorned with lace. Her lips were bright red, her eyes were deep blue, and her long dark eyelashes gave her a dreamy expression. She sat majestically on the bed, the edges of her dress turned up on the mattress, which gave the simple communist furniture a solemn, Habsburg air. I watched for hours, longing to touch her. Sometimes I sat in a chair at the doorstep of the bedroom – which was as close to her as I was allowed – and we talked about whether she would ever want to be a toy and not a decoration.

After the fall of communism, many people began to modernize their homes and buy new Western-style beds and wardrobes. Anyushka’s time had also run out, and the neighbors asked if I wanted a doll. “You loved him so much when you were little,” they said. But I didn’t want it anymore. Perhaps I was too old for toys. Perhaps it was difficult to imagine regal Anyushka placed anywhere else but on the harsh communist bed of my neighbors. But maybe also because there is something unsettling about the memory of strong desires that fade with time, as if they were never so strong or as if they were never ours.

Did Anyushka really personify happiness, or in the nature of happiness, our idea of ​​it is focused on those things that are by their nature inaccessible?

So thought the German poet Johann W. Goethe. happiness, hey This is the ball that we run after wherever it rolls and kick it with our feet when it stops. Ball or doll, I find his point of view plausible. I am perplexed when the pursuit of happiness is presented as some kind of obvious understanding that we should all share. Take the popular saying that became a fixture on people’s T-shirts in Albania just after the end of the Cold War, accompanied by a smiling yellow face: “Don’t worry, be happy.” Why? It’s hard to imagine what will be left of happiness when you get rid of anxiety. Every action involves a mixture of self-doubt, inconsistent efforts, the temptation of evil, the insecurity of satisfaction. If we abstract from all this in the pursuit of happiness, then it is hardly possible to determine at all what is left of happiness.

Things get even more confusing (and somewhat unsettling) when the pursuit of happiness, from a personal goal, becomes the basis of political life. Take the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, which presents it as a “self-evident truth,” an inalienable right with which all Men were endowed. A critic might object that there is a fundamental problem with the exception. The historical accuracy of this judgment is reflected philosophically in the shortcomings of moral theory, which promotes “the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.” This is one of the most famous phrases of Jeremy Bentham, the founding father of utilitarianism, and one of the biggest influences on liberal economic thought. One might ask, what about the smallest number? What to do for those who do not know what their happiness is? Can happiness be measured? Is it really possible to achieve the happiness of one person without causing suffering to another? What if the nature of happiness were to include the satisfaction of desires, which are always comparative and relative, and sometimes destructive?

There is only one view of happiness that I find convincing, but it is only convincing because it is not about happiness at all. The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that happiness can never be the guiding principle of action, it is the most that we can hope to enjoy. if we fulfill our obligations. We do what is right only because it is right and not in the expectation of a reward. Happiness may or may not come as a result of virtuous behavior, but it should not be made a condition of knowing how to act.

Some find this look unbearably sad, unbearably Protestant, or both. Are they draining the joy of life, they ask, turning our relationships with others into a list of moral obligations that relegates feelings and satisfaction to second place?

But I have always found the view both liberating and inspiring at the same time. You focus on the world as a whole and interact with others, aware of your finiteness, aware of the arbitrariness of inclinations and the randomness of desires. It encourages acceptance of anxiety and appreciation of aspiration, as well as seeking the meaning of life beyond personal pleasure. I don’t think it’s sad at all either… And in general, what could be worse than “Don’t worry, be happy”, an order to achieve what is, by definition, unattainable?