It’s never too late for romance.

Taking advantage of the three-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, five Jewish couples were married in a mass wedding ceremony in Kyiv over the weekend. Some of the couples had been living together for years but could not marry because of the war.

The couples represented a wide spectrum of ages, from young to the old, with the oldest being a 92-year-old couple.

The event took place at the Beit Menachem Jewish Community Center, where the weddings were conducted according to Jewish tradition, the JCC said. The JCC funded the mass wedding, hosting about 250 guests.

The ceasefire that created the conditions for the wedding ceremony was set for May 9-11 so both countries could celebrate Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

Kyiv Chief Rabbi Yonatan Markovitch, who is affiliated with Chabad, described the event as one of the most emotional and moving moments of the war.

“To witness a couple aged 92 entering the chuppah is not something ordinary,” he said. “We have been living for a long time under the shadow of war, with uncertainty and daily challenges becoming part of normal life. And specifically within that reality, people are choosing to pause and declare: we are continuing the chain of generations, preserving our tradition, and building a Jewish home.”

According to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, an estimated 32,000 Jews live in Ukraine, with Markovitch saying that tens of thousands live in Kyiv, though there is no hard data concerning those numbers. The synagogue brings together hundreds of families, he said.

The war has inflicted great hardship on Ukraine’s Jewish community. For example, Markovitch’s school was struck by a drone in 2024 and sustained heavy damage.