Anton celebrated his thirteenth birthday in the basement of Mariupol. At the time, he did not know whether they would survive. The boy, his mom, and his grandpa narrowly escaped death. He remembers them running along the streets of the city which was on fire, to the whiz of bullets. He will never forget covering his five-year-old brother's ears during an air attack, russian planes razing houses to the ground.
Anton's father is a National Guard officer. On the first day, he rose to the defense of Mariupol, and in April 2022 he died. The whole family happened to be in occupation. They could not leave, the database already contained data that Anton was the son of a military servant. They only returned to Ukraine in December 2023.
The teenager told his story during his rest at the "Blogger Camp" arranged by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation in cooperation with the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
