2023-10-01 14:05:00
Erika, 20, lost her husband on the front, just like Daryna, 21. Katia’s fiancé, 22, was also killed in combat. The Russian invasion of Ukraine leaves behind widows whose adult lives have barely begun.
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Erika Martyniouk and Saveliy Fedan, 21, got married in February, a day before the young man, a student at the Odessa military academy, left for the front.
Like many other Ukrainians, it was the Russian invasion that pushed them to formalize their relationship.
“We were afraid of losing each other,” explains Erika, a chemistry student in kyiv. Since then, the couple has spent barely five days together.
Commander of a unit in the 46th Assault Brigade, Saveliy escaped the bloody battle of Bakhmut alive, but was killed on August 27 in the Zaporizhia region. Disfigured, he was identified by his tattoos.
“When I saw his photos in the Zaporizhia morgue, it was as if I had died too,” says the young woman, dressed in a black t-shirt with the inscription “be a warrior, live forever,” a gift from her husband. “I no longer have a goal, no more dreams.”
Every day, she continues to send him messages and wants to become a paramedic on the front.
“Maybe I could save someone else,” hopes Erika, whose careful makeup contrasts with her husband’s military bag over her shoulder that she always carries with her.
The relatively peaceful life in kyiv makes her “crazy”: “people walk around, laugh and talk about the evenings. And I’m going to the cemetery.
Ukraine does not reveal the number of its soldiers who fell at the front or their ages.
But according to Oksana Borkoune, co-founder of an association of women who have lost their husbands or partners, 7% of the approximately 2,000 members of her Facebook community are between 18 and 24 years old.
These young women plunge “into total despair”, testifies Ms. Borkoune.
“Older women have children, tasks to do, a job. Something they can hold on to (…) Young women, they completely collapse,” some end up being hospitalized, she explains.
And those close to them sometimes lack tact when trying to console them. “They tell them things like ‘you’re still young, you’ll find someone else'”, or even push them to “get to know someone”, says Ms Borkoune. Result: young widows withdraw into themselves.
For Erika, the only people who really understand her are two other young women who lost their companions on the front and who do not try to reassure her. “They say unequivocally: ‘no, it won’t work, you will still be in pain for a very long time and you won’t know what to do’,” she says.
Daryna, another young widow, admits to “having a lot of difficulty maintaining social contacts,” except at school where she teaches English.
Student of Japanese philology, Igor Voïevodine, nom de guerre Stitch – after an alien in a Disney film -, became a sniper at the age of 20 within the Azov brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard after the start of the Russian invasion, despite his family’s attempts to dissuade him. He died on August 20, less than a month after the wedding.
Daryna buried him, took his last name, and got a tattoo of Stitch.
But she still can’t accept her death.
“I still think he’s just busy and will come back soon,” says this young woman with long hair, hiding her trembling hands.
She vowed to achieve the dreams they had together: a high-end car and a house by the sea.
For Serguiï Kvit, president of the prestigious Kyiv Mohyla Academy university, of which at least five students fell on the front, these young Ukrainians are fighting for “dignity and justice” and “are building” the future of their country .
“This war is a very hard blow to our generation,” says Daryna. “After the war, we are going to have a lot of problems, because the best, the most motivated, will have been killed.”
“So many guys die and nothing changes. How much longer will this last?” Erika asks, in tears.
While she speaks to an AFP team in a park in kyiv, her friend Katia is waiting for her. Her fiancé died in combat two days ago. The next day, the two young women will go to his funeral.
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