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“I would have never forgiven myself if this girl had been taken to an orphanage”
Valeriya Zelenska evacuated little Alisa who conquered the whole world thanks to her address from a bomb shelter of Azovstal plant.
During the evacuation of civilians from the steel plant’s territory, russian invaders separated a mother from her four-year-old child. They sent the woman to a filtration camp and were going to take the girl to a children’s orphanage.
Without hesitating for a second, Valeriya Zelenska took Alisa with her and brought her to her relatives in a peaceful part of Ukraine.
I myself am from a small town, the town of Svitlodarsk. This is near Debaltseve. It is a town where energy sector workers live. A very small but cosy town. In 2014, when it all started in Debaltseve, people who were given the “green corridor”…, those people even walked with prams to get to Svitlodarsk, to a place not affected by the war. In January of 2015, our place came under shelling too and some hits and damages followed. When our school did not open for schoolchildren, my grandmother was very worried because it was my 11th grade [last school year]. We had relatives in Mariupol and so I was sent there to study. I finished school there and stayed on to live there.
I lived there for two years, or a little more, and ended up in the same situation again, in the same place, let’s say, in a circle.
From 23rd to 24th [February], I was visiting [our relatives] at that moment, and I heard Grad MLRS fire. We were together with the colleagues from my work and I said, “Call to Ilyich [steel plant] because it is not clear where the shooting is.” We tried to call a taxi, well, to call a taxi for our guys to go to Ilyich plant. No one picked up the telephone and the prices for taxi surged terribly high. UAH 300 to get to Ilyich plant was very expensive. I knew already then that it was all unfolding. We went down to the basement to see how it was there, to get settled in there so that we could have a place where to run. We spent one night at home but the shellfire continued, and so the next day we remained in the basement. That was when the first incoming air strike happened.
No matter if you want it or not but you get used to shelling anyway.
Well, it’s scary, indeed. You realize that you are in danger but it was still even scarier to stay in the basements because when it hits the house, everything shakes, even the basement. You are sitting and guessing: will the house collapse now or will it not. As the houses are panel or concrete slab structures, and it turned out to be... in the end, it collapsed. It could not stand it. After numerous fires, one-room flats folded in. They collapsed and fell down from the tenth to the first floor, and there were some dead people there. A family, a 38-year-old man, his parents and a three-year-old girl. Others managed to escape. There were some people under the rubble. They were taken out, they were rescued. One woman had burns but the children remained unharmed. One little girl could not be saved. They could not even dig up her body.
I got to Azovstal plant in April. The military men, who were leaving, said then, “We can take you with us. Let’s get out of here.” And that’s how I got to the steel plant. I am grateful to them. First, we got into a smaller bomb shelter, a small one. There were six of us there, all civilians. Then we moved to another bomb shelter, from which we were evacuated then. When the evacuation took place, when we were taken out of the plant, we were met by… There was sort of a delimitation, a line of demarcation, let’s put it this way. Our side took us to this line, handed us over to that side, and we walked and got on the bus. We took our seats, being accompanied by the UN and the Red Cross. We were taken to Bezimenne. We were in Bezimenne and passed through the filtration, as it turned out. They interrogated people, young women and men. Before that, everything was made separately.
Some young women were ordered to undress, including me. They checked if we were the military or not. They looked at our shoulders and arms. Let’s say, they examined us. And those of us whom they did not like or those who seemed suspicious to them were taken for thorough, in-depth interrogation.
I did not know Vika before. We first met each other when going through the filtration. She is a military medic and she worked at a military hospital. As we were sitting there, she came in and we started talking to her. She explained her situation, which was that they did not want to let her go, and they were going to take the kid to a children’s orphanage. Azov regiment recorded a video about this little girl. I was like, “Oh, Lord.” I could not even imagine that she was already a little [video] star.
- What is your name?
- Alisa.
- What would you like to say?
- I want to be evacuated.
- And where are you now?
- Well, I am in a bunker.
- Do you like it here?
- I want to go home.
- And who would you like to pass hello to?
- Grandma Sveta.
Itoldher, “Let me take the girl with me under my responsibility. Iwillpickherupandwill be taking care of her.”I will not letherbetakenaway, ifI can do that. So the UN and the Red Cross people began to negotiate, and other people also engaged in making some arrangements so that the issue with the girl could be resolved, at least to take her out. They gave the permission. Vika wrote a letter of authorization on my name. Let’s say, she made a handwritten letter of delegation saying that the girl would be under my responsibility until I handed her over to her relatives.
My conscience would not sanction it for the girl to end up in an orphanage. Every child should be in a family one way or another because an orphanage is an orphanage. It is hard; it is difficult.
Vika talked to her and made her ready for it. She said, “You will go together with this aunt” – “I will.” Well, Alisa has been so cheerful all the time, “Yes, I will go with this aunt. I will be with the aunt.” Well, her reaction was quite calm, she was undisturbed. She just asked, “When will you return? For how long do you go?” Otherwise, her reaction was pretty good. I was surprised to see that she was really so easy to engage with, to find contact with from the very beginning. Such a good girl...
Well, then later Zlata, who is the deputy governor, took the girl. I am supposed to be staying with her at the hotel but she took the child. She has a family and a kid too and so Alisa plays with that other child. Well, it is a different environment for her, more like home environment. It will give her more in terms of some kind of a psychological discharge, which is better than staying at the hotel. After all, she is in comfort and warmth there. There are other children with whom she can play and she can keep her mind off things a bit in that way. It will be much better for the child than staying caged up within the four walls [of the hotel room]. There she plays, walks, and communicates with others. I know that she is in good hands now. I am worried just a little bit. I even miss her a little, I miss hearing her chatting. But I am glad that everything is fine, that she is not stressed too much.
I realized one thing: you cannot make plans because plans don’t always come true.
In fact, after all these situations, things change so much – your way of thinking, your line of [doing] something. You begin to value something more, you let something go, and some other values appear in your life. You start thinking about one thing or another. Everything changes drastically. As for making plans now – yes, this is great but we have to live right now, live every moment and really enjoy it. There’s no other way. I think that everything will be fine. Everything will get settled.
Everyone who has lost something will gain much more.
Everything of a material nature can be restored. It is hard mentally, for sure. For many people, it will take a long time before they come to their senses, realize what happened and let go of this situation. I think that everyone will forget the sound of sirens, shooting and incoming artillery strikes. People will wake up in the morning and will not hear a plane flying somewhere. They will not need to cover their ears as they did previously, when the bomb fell. I think that every person deserves to forget it and remember only the good moments. And even at such a time when there is a war around, people still managed to have some moments of joy and find some positive notes in it. Many people became much closer, found or gained new friends. I would say, even a family. It is great that in such a difficult moment people held on and supported each other in this or that way. And vice versa, there were situations where people came apart and, let’s say, understood that the war stripped away all disguises, unmasked everyone.
When quoting a story, a reference to the source – the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation – is mandatory, as follows:
The Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation https://civilvoicesmuseum.org/
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