“The Russians wished us good luck, and then they shot us” – time.news

by time news
from Francesco Battistini

At least 231 Ukrainian children lost their lives. Here are some stories, told by surviving relatives. A drop in the sea of ​​blood shed by the most innocent

From our correspondent

KIEV – «I run to Dominichka and just shout:“ Dominichka! Dominichka! “. Her, nothing. Property. Mute. I tear off a scarf, bandage her legs. Useless. My beloved child, I have not saved you! ». His name is Vladimir, he is a dad: his is one of the thousand stories collected in 85 days of bombs, and will end up in the dossiers to be presented to the Criminal Court in The Hague, if and when there is a trial. It is known that in peace it is the children who bury their fathers, but not in war: the Kiev Prosecutor General says that 231, the children killed in almost three months. Three a day. Most of them in Donetsk, in Kiev, in Kharkiv in Kherson, in Chernihiv, in Lugansk. And in Mykolaiv, where a mine exploded on the highway on Tuesday: of a 5-year-old girl, almost nothing was found. A drop in the sea of ​​blood shed by the most innocent. Here are some of their stories.

A mother’s scream at the checkpoint

Story of Sofia Fedkov, 6 years old. «At 5.13 pm I called my mom on the cell phone. She was in the car with my two little brothers, Ivan and Sofia. I was asking her: “Why don’t you go to Odessa? It is safer there, there is also a free apartment “. Suddenly, I heard my mom scream: “My God! He is just a child! How can you do it?“. Then you shoot him. A door slamming. More shots ». Denis Fedkov tells it as if he had seen it, the murder of his sister Sofia, 6 years old. Mother Irina had decided to run away with the children from the village, Vesele, when the Russians arrived in Kherson on March 5 and cut off electricity and water. By car, towards Nova Kakhovka, to the home of her relatives. The father, Oleg, is a policeman called to fight and had thought that this was the only way out: in the car in front of the Fedkov’s, there were also his uncles. «Hearing the shots too – Denis says -, my aunt went back. At the level of the dam, you saw the Russians. She walked over and asked what happened. They pointed to a ditch and replied: “That woman didn’t stop at the checkpoint.” Ivan was wounded in the head and was screaming. Sofia had a hole in her chest. They took them to the hospital, but my sister was already dead. They left my mother’s body there one day before giving us permission to retrieve it. ”

The fast Arseniy and the anesthetist aunt

History of Arseniy, 14 years old. A white T-shirt with “Grrr” on it. Beside, the sister hugging her father. On the other side, Aunt Marina placing a hand on his shoulder. What remains of Arseniy’s life, «Senya» for all, is kept only on Facebook. On March 3, when fighting raged around Kiev, the Russian target practice on Zagaltsy also began. Senya had made a run – at 14, he was the fastest in the country’s football club – but the bombs were too many: a splinter hit him in the head. Senya was in agony for two hours, bleeding out. No one could retrieve it, because the Russians fired on anyone who approached. At one point, he made it Marina Kalabina, the aunt in the photo, who was an anesthetist by profession and she wanted to at least try to revive him: a skid, a braking, the effort of dragging the almost dead boy into the car. They even pulled on her. They killed her instantly. The bodies of Senya and her aunt Marina remained on the asphalt for days before anyone could pick them up. Close to them, a few hundred meters away, there was the kindergarten where Senya used to go as a child: it no longer exists, burned in the war like the life of the little football player.

Sasha, drowned in the “sea of ​​Kiev”

Story of Sasha, 4 years old. The day they found Sasha’s body, it was almost a relief. Anna, the mother, understood that there was nothing more to be done. But she was begging for someone to bury. «A mother should never give her children a grave», says Anna Yakhno: «Now at least I know that her soul has found peace. And that Sasha is an angel in heaven. ” About 4-year-old Sasha, news had been lost on March 10. In Vyshorod, the Russians had closed all access routes and destroyed the bridges over the Dnieper: how to escape? The inhabitants had recovered all possible boats, the idea was to take “the sea of ​​Kiev”, the basin of the hydroelectric power plant, and try to get out of the water. Sasha had been made to wear a life jacket, grandmother by the hand, the boat packed. But they bombed, all right if they bombed. And for the panic, for the troubled waters, for the bad luck, suddenly the boat had capsized. Grandma couldn’t hold Sasha’s little hand tightly, she drowned right away. The little body went with the current and someone saw that she was still fidgeting: it was found two days later, swollen with water and immobile, in a reed bed along the banks.

Greetings and shots

Story of Yelisey Ryabokon, 13 years old. Yelisey’s funeral was terrible. Her dad, Yevgeny, hugged the white coffin and the framed photo of a smiling boy: he was trying to say something, but his voice didn’t come out. Yelisey was from Peremoga, a small town near Kiev: “That day – says her mother, Inna – the Russians had given us permission to leave. They even greeted us and wished us good luck. But when we formed a column of five cars and crossed the fields, to reach the road, they started shooting at us from all sides“. Yelisey was in the second car, pierced by bullets, and no one was saved up there. “I crawled along the fields – says Inna – and I managed to recover only the other son, the youngest who is three years old, pulling him out of the car by the hood of his jacket”. The place where Yelisey was killed is in the countryside of Brovary, on the outskirts of Kiev, one of the most battered countries. Impossible for anyone to reach that camp: the boy died on 11 March, but it took a month to organize his funeral. “I live only for the other child – says Inna – And for someone to pay for all this”.

May 20, 2022 (change May 20, 2022 | 11:49)

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