“Our mother was buried in the yard… The children buried her…”

Sisters Sofia (13 years old) and Anastasia (8 years old) are from Mariupol. Their mother and brother were killed by an aerial bomb when they went out to fetch some water and coal. That day Sofia was next to them and she survived just by a miracle. Little Anastasia was waiting for her at home. The girls were left unprotected in the epicentre of the military hostilities. They ended up in Donetsk city… The only hope was to inform their eldest sister Valentyna about everything that had happened… To be able to take the girls out of the uncontrolled territory, she had to travel through several countries… Valentyna took the sisters into her care. Although she herself is still a student, she has already set as her goal to help the sisters forget all the horror they came through, help them to develop, get a good education, and be happy...

I am from Mariupol, Donetsk region. My mother and my sisters lived separately. At that time, I lived in a foster family. I did not live with my mother. She had been deprived of her parental rights, and when the war began...

I came here, to Dnipro, got married and lived in Dnipro city before the war. I was trying to figure it out how to contact my mother, how to get in touch with my brother and the girls, but it turned out that there was no telephone connection in Mariupol, there was nothing.

Therefore, four months later, while I kept looking for them, I found out that my mother and brother died, and the girls were left alone with our mother’s friend. In fact, the children buried them. Our brother’s body remained lying under a concrete slab at the [steel] plant, and our mother... she was dug up and then buried in the yard by the children and her friend.

I attended an environmental circle when at school and studied drawing. The war broke out. We did not have money to move somewhere, so we stayed in Mariupol. We moved to live with our mother’s friend because we did not have a stove to be able to heat the housing.

Then, on one not very nice day, we went out to the plant to fetch some water and coal for heating the premises, as we ran out of water, and we came under shellfire. The first shell hit right near us. It was probably dropped on us on purpose, because the plane was flying over. I suspect it was done on purpose.

We had a Ukrainian military base, and they were the target – a lot of people died. I heard almost everything, and just by accident, we were passing by then, when the shell stroke. We did not hear that it was flying towards us. We did not even have time to do anything. It just came in instantly. In a matter of a second, an explosion rang out – and that was it.

My sister was not with me then. I was with my brother and our mother, who were a little further than I was. I walked a little further up, ahead of them. They were blasted by fire, and I was hit only by one stone. When I learned that my mother died, I wanted to cry very much, but my sister told me not to cry.

We did not know what to do then. I wanted to get away, to go a long way off from this horror, but I could not, because there was no car, and I did not know where to go either. Then my mother’s friend told the military to deport us to Novoazovsk, and then... and then to Donetsk.

I came to Novoazovsk and called Valya right away because she is our only relative. I asked her to take us away from here because we had no one, no other relative left. I barely found out the password to connect to the Internet, because they did not give it to me. I said something like, “Can I call my sister? I have a relative who can pick us up.” But they simply ignored me.

In the hospital, I also asked the doctor and the chief physician to give me the password to connect to the Internet, but she did not tell it to me. However, I eventually found it out from a boy. Then I phoned my sister and told her where I was, asking her to pick us up.

For four months, I tried to get through to the so-called “DPR” Ministry of Emergency Situations in Donetsk to ask them to take the children from Mariupol, because the children were completely alone, without anyone, and I think they were afraid to be alone. I got through to the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the so–called “DPR”, and they said that they could not help me in any way, that they would not be able to evacuate the children, because there was no place either in the orphanage, or in the hospital, nowhere.

Then I had to call to Kyiv, to the Ministry of Reintegration (that is the name if I am correct), and they helped me there. Iryna Vereshchuk helped me to pick up the children, because I myself was just unable to do it for financial reasons. I needed a lot of money to go to Donetsk and then back.

That is, this was a very, very long way to cover. I had to travel through all the countries. I could not find a large amount of money to go to Donetsk for picking them up. To do that, I had to travel through several countries: all the way through the territory of Ukraine, then Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, russia, and only then Donetsk. It was very expensive financially.

So, this was the first reason, and the second reason was the communication. There was no telephone connection, the Internet was very bad and I could not get through to them.

Our middle sister Sofia called me, and only then did I start calling everyone, arranging, talking, and solving the problem of how to take the children out of there, as I could not get through anywhere in Donetsk either. About three months later, the middle sister Sofia called me and said that they were in the hospital in Novoazovsk.

They got ill with lichen, and they were on a treatment there. She took the phone from her brother, who had been killed, and she called me via the Internet as soon as she found the possibility. She guessed the password. Certainly, I tackled the problem immediately. I started looking for someone whom I could contact and ask to help me pick up the girls. Well, they helped me.

After this call, I immediately ran to the guardianship service in Dnipro, so that they would give me the status of the caretaker for me to be able to take care of the children. First, they did not want to do this, because the children were not next to me, but were in a completely different place.

However, in order for me to pick them up, there must have been grounds, that is, who I am to them, and who I am in general. Speaking of documents, it’s good that I still have my birth certificate and the girls have their birth certificates too, where our mother was indicated – her family name, her first name and patronymic.

Well, I managed to prove that I take custody of the girls on the grounds of our kinship. They gave me the papers and that was it. Then I went to pick up the girls. That is, without the documents, no one would have given me the children.

We were so much happy when our sister came to the hospital at five o’clock. She was like, “Good morning”. It was... I was very scared, but it was a real moment of happiness. It was really great that our sister came to take us out. I always wanted to live with my sister. To be honest, it is quite cool to be an elder sister.

I am a student. I study, and the girls attend their school classes. I help them with home tasks, as much as possible, because they missed a very long period of studies. That is, I have to help them catch up with the curriculum.

Our middle sister has very good drawing skills, and the youngest one has not yet figured out what she wants to do, what she is fond of, so we tend to help her in some way. She wants to become a tailor, but first I need to finish my studies and then the girls need to finish their school studies.

Next, I will try to do everything possible to ensure that the girls get a good education, because no one had been taking care of them. All this time, I will be helping them in everything. I will help them to realize their potential in life.