The Story of Love, a bronze statue located near the Bridge of Lovers in Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine, depicting an elderly man and a woman locked in a tight embrace, was sculpted by the Ukrainian sculptors Oleksandr Morhatsky and Hryhoriy Kostiukov, and symbolises the everlasting love between an Italian soldier and a Ukrainian woman, who were brought together in a concentration camp in Austria during the war and then lost contact and separated for a long time after the war, until they dramatically met again after a long period of 60 years.

It all began in 1943, during the Second World War, when Luigi Pedutto, an Italian soldier, and Mokryna Yurzhuk, a Ukrainian woman, were brought to the Sankat Pölen camp, a Nazi forced labour camp in Viehofen, Austria. For two years they were together, fell in love and became soul mates. But their togetherness ended with the end of the Great War, when they were separated by geographical boundaries and political issues. While the Soviet authorities did not allow Mokryna to travel to Italy to meet her lover, Luigi was also not allowed to visit Ukraine. Eventually, the lovers were separated for a very long period, lost contact, and both of them moved on with their separate lives. Luigi started his new life, working as a financier in Italy, while Mokryna became a collective farmer in Ukraine. Both married and had children, but none of them forgot the memory of their wartime love, and both of them kept a fond and long-lasting memory of each other to make it a symbol of enduring love, during which Luigi kept a lock of Mokryna’s hair and her shirt.

Strangely, things took a turn in 2004, when old and widowed Luigi, asked a Ukrainian woman in his town near Naples to help him write a letter to the organisers of a Russian TV show, which helps reunite lost loves. He wrote the letter in the month of June and after six months, he was contacted by the producers of the show on 11th October over telephone, asking him to fly to Moscow to reunite with Mokryna. Luigi immediately got his passport sorted out, flew to Moscow, and on the second evening, went to attend the popular TV show ‘Wait for me’ (Чекай на мене), where he found Mokryna after 60 years. While everyone was happily clapping, cheering them up, Luigi was totally moved to tears, but Maria did not seem quite so moved. A hard life on a collective farm made her look much older than Luigi, who was still a twinkly-eyed old man, happily recalling the nostalgic sweet days of his past.

The particular episode of ‘Wait for me’ that was filmed in Moscow, brought the couple together after a long 60 years, and after the unexpected meeting, they always kept in touch with each other, till the death of Luigi in 2013, while Mokryna followed him two years later. The journalists hoped that the couple might get married, and although Luigi asked Mokryna to marry him, Mokryna refused his proposal as both of them were over 90-years-old. However, they kept in touch and visited each other, and when Mokryna Yurzuk visited Luigi Pedutto in Italy for the first time, she was awarded an honorary citizen of his home town, Castel San Lorenzo in Salerno.

Nevertheless, the TV team, along with the people of Kyiv, was extremely moved and thrilled with the history of this eternal love between Luigi and Mokryna that overcame war, time, long separation and distance, and took the unusual step of erecting a statue of the couple to immortalise and commemorate their story. Finally, the bronze statue, titled Story of Love, and depicting the embracing elderly couple, Luigi Pedutto and Mokryna Yurzuk, was installed in Mariyinsky Park near the Bridge of Lovers, also known as the Kissing Bridge, and was unveiled on 7th May 2013, with Luigi attending the ceremony, though Yurzuk was too ill to attend. Later, an exact copy of the sculpture was inaugurated on 30 April 2017, on the main square of Castel San Lorenzo, Luigi Pedutto’s native town, attended by more than a thousand people, almost half of the town.