Maksym and his friend wear ancient helmets and dummy weapons that cannot kill. But the very real war in which these two Ukrainian children are playing in a field is a reflection of trauma that will continue.
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After 15 months of Russian invasion, conflict is pervasive in Ukrainian society, even to the point of invading children’s games.
“I really like playing war. I want to grow up to be a real hero,” says young Maksym Moudrak, 10, outfitted in combat fatigues his size, a battered helmet that is too big for him and a plastic pistol.
His father, who was not a soldier, was killed near Kiev in the early days of the Russian invasion while trying to help volunteer militants trying to protect the capital.
“He was very, very saddened by the death of his father. He thinks of himself all the time. He goes to the cemetery and cries,” his grandmother Valentyna Moudrak, 72, told AFP.
Photo Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP
The little boy now wants to become a soldier to preserve the memory of his father. And he has a clear idea of who is responsible for this war.
“The Russians are my worst enemies,” says Maksym, who lives with his grandmother in Stoïanka near Kiev.
“All Evil”
The Russian invasion meant the loss of loved ones, the end of school and early experience of the horrors of war for Ukrainian children.
More than 500 children have died since February 24, 2022, the date when the Russian invasion began, according to the UN.
For the psychologist Kateryna Goltsberg, the fact that children “play war” is widespread in conflict zones and must be analyzed above all as a means for them to express their emotions and feelings.
Photo Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP
“War changes (people),” she told AFP, referring to the “post-traumatic stress” that accompanies shock but also the possibility that an individual “emerges stronger from such a trial.”
In Ukraine, fighting at the front has spread to playgrounds.
Lessya Chevtchenko, mother of little Dana, 8, says that before the war, when her daughter met other children, she had only one wish: to play. ” What’s your first name ? Come on, let’s play! She would say.
But during a recent beach holiday in Bulgaria, Ms Shevchenko was amazed to hear her daughter asking other children where they were from. And above all, when they answered that they were Russians, she turned her back on them and left without a word.
“I don’t want to talk to them,” Dana said. “Probably because I think all Russians are kind of bad.”
Her mother, a 49-year-old dentist, says she didn’t raise her to think that way. But the trauma runs deep for the little girl, who is now afraid of loud noises and balks at leaving the bomb shelters.
Photo Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP
“Revenge”
While Ms. Shevchenko admits that some Russians may oppose the war in Ukraine, other parents teach their children that all Russians are responsible.
Such is the case of Iryna Kovalenko. Her daughter Sofia, 6, summed up her feelings: “My mother told me they were sending bombs from Russia to Ukraine. She also said that (Russian President Vladimir Putin) was very mean.”
Without batting an eyelid, the little one continues: “He used to hit cats and dogs as a child. Now that he’s an adult, he’s after the grown-ups.
By making such remarks to them and telling them this version of the war, Ms. Kovalenko, a 33-year-old nurse, claims she wanted to warn her children.
“One way or another, they need to know who lives on their doorstep. Ukraine will always have a border and Russia will always be our neighbor,” she said.
In Maksym’s group of little comrades, one seems particularly determined.
“I really want us to take revenge for all the soldiers who died at the front,” says one of them, Andriï Chyrokykh, 13, in combat fatigues.
The teenager says he dreams of becoming a soldier when he grows up. School no longer interests him, except for learning military strategy.
“I want to do to the Russians what they did to us,” he says.