The parents' bodies lay on the street for more than a day. How war makes thousands of children orphans

What is the fate of the children of the war who were left without both parents, where are they now? And how did the war affect the adoption of orphans in Ukraine, at a time when thousands of children from the occupied territories were taken to Russia? BBC News Ukraine sought answers to these questions.

 

Bohdan: Ran away from his neighbors and went to the place where his mother died

 

Eight-year-old Bohdan from Bakhmut is one of the 1,128 children who became orphans in this war. He was with neighbors when his mother went to the funeral of a relative who was killed in shelling. But on the way to the funeral, his mother and other people were killed by shrapnel. Bohdan's mother was 7 months pregnant. The boy's stepfather also died. According to the police, their bodies were lying on the street for several days. The enemy attacks did not stop and it was impossible to take away the bodies of the killed. When Bohdan learned that his mother and stepfather had died, he ran away from his neighbors, grabbed a bicycle and drove to the place of their death. Members of the forces of order searched for him during the shelling, in the middle of the destroyed city, and after they found him, they took him to a safe area.

Then the child was handed over to a woman who knew the deceased and Bohdan. She was previously evacuated to the Kyiv region, Natalia Timofeeva, head of the children's service of the Donetsk regional state administration, told BBC News Ukraine.

Now the boy is undergoing rehabilitation in Spain.

Natalia Timofejeva says that if this family had evacuated from the Donetsk region in time, as the authorities requested, this tragedy would not have happened.

 

Matvej: He tried to save his mother by listening to the doctor

 

Another story was told to BBC News Ukraine by Yevgenija Fedorchuk, the coordinator of the charity foundation "Grow up in the Family".

 

Matvej's family (the name has been changed. - editor) lived in the Brovari district of the Kiev region. On the first day of the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine, the boy, his grandmother, mother and his older sister's family decided to flee to the village where they have a cottage. But the village was captured by Russian troops the next day.

Tatjana's mother had problems with blood pressure, her condition worsened due to stress. She could not see a doctor, not a single doctor could come to the village.

One day, Tatjana got sick, she had a pain in her heart. The doctor tried to help over the phone, he explained to the relatives what to do. 14-year-old Matvej and his sister's husband performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the woman. But they could not save her.

After the liberation of Kyiv Oblast, the exhumation of the body showed that Tatiana had a heart attack.

The boy was left an orphan. His mother's common-law husband says he is not the boy's father.

His grandmother became Matvej's guardian. They are now living on her pension and thanks to the help of the charity fund "Rasti u rojima". The fund for support of pensioners who raise minor children independently helps this family by donating food every month.

 

Relatives and friends drop off

 

State authorities say that most children whose parents were killed or died during the war do not end up in orphanages and boarding schools, but are immediately taken away by relatives and friends.

"Most children who become orphans immediately end up with their closest relatives, in a family environment," says Volodimir Vovk, deputy director of the Department for the Protection of Children's Rights of the National Social Service.

Volodymyr Vovk recalls the last terrible incident: on December 7, a 38-year-old man and his 32-year-old wife were killed by a mine in the Zhytomyr region.

They had eight minor children.

According to what Volodymyr Vovk told BBC News Ukraine, the maternal grandmother and uncle immediately declared that they were ready to take care of the children.

As Natalija Timofejeva from the Donetsk regional state administration explains, the system is already in place: after it is known that a child has lost its parents, one must first look for close relatives who can take the child and take care of it. If this is not possible, then placing children in family-type orphanages or foster families is another option. And only as a last resort - to institutions.

 

Volodimir Vovk says that in almost 10 months of war, out of more than 1,000 children whose parents died, 54 children were adopted by the beginning of December, and the rest of the children were taken care of by relatives and friends.

 

Olja and Andrij: The father refused in writing to evacuate

 

After the deoccupation of Liman, the father of two children, Olja and Andrij, aged 10 and nine, died from shrapnel during shelling in the nearby village of Toretske. Their mother died a few years before the start of the war. Before his death, the father wrote a written refusal to evacuate.

"The children were immediately taken by their adult sister, and then they were taken to the Zakarpattia region for rehabilitation," says Natalija Timofejeva. They are also from Liman, but they evacuated in time. Now the children are in a new family, in Lviv."

 

Impossible to separate from war

 

In total, during the war, more than 5,800 children were left without parental care. As of December 1, the representative of the National Social Service, Volodimir Vovk, has provided such data. The total number of children with this status in Ukraine is about 68,000. And most of them are not orphans.

"It is difficult to talk about these five thousand. The causes are different. There are those who have been deprived of parental rights, those who avoid their obligations or those who do not have the means to live, or have a difficult mental state. This number includes children whose parents may in captivity, they are fighting or their whereabouts are unknown. Any situation in which a child is left without parental care cannot be "separated" from war," Vovk is convinced.

 

The status of a child who has lost parental care allows relatives and friends to quickly take the child and take care of him, place him in foster families or family-type orphanages and receive financial assistance.

 

Chances of adoption

 

There are currently 68,000 children in Ukraine who have the status of a child deprived of parental care. 16,000 of them are waiting for adoption. But the war reduced the chances of these children to find a new family.

 

The number of adopted children in 2022 decreased sharply compared to 2021, despite the fact that the pace of adoption slowed down last year due to the coronavirus.

Last year, 1,354 children were adopted, and in 2022 - 644, Volodymyr Vovk, a representative of the National Social Service of Ukraine, told BBC News Ukraine.

The adoption of children by foreign citizens has more than halved. Last year there were 272, this year 95.

During the state of emergency, foreigners were prohibited from adopting Ukrainian children, so children were adopted this year whose adoption process was started in 2021, and the final processing of documents was completed this year.

According to various sources, hundreds of children from Ukraine were adopted in Russia during the war. These are children who were taken from the occupied Ukrainian territories to the Russian Federation and distributed among families in different regions.

Ukrainian authorities claim that 12,340 Ukrainian children were abducted and taken to Russia or temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Only 119 children managed to return to Ukraine to their relatives.