Obedinsky’s mother died when she was still a baby. Her father Yevhen Obedinsky, a former captain of Ukraine’s national water polo team, was shot dead on March 17 as Russian forces advanced into the southeastern city of Mariupol.
Days later, Kira and her father’s friend, along with neighbors, attempted to flee the city on foot. But after being injured in a land mine explosion, Kira was taken to a hospital in the Donetsk region controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.
Now Kira’s grandfather Oleksander fears he will never see her again. He said an official of the breakaway government in Donetsk called and invited him to travel there to get them, which the war made impossible.
He says he spoke to the hospital and was told Kira would eventually be sent to an orphanage in Russia.
The Russian government said it helped move at least 60,000 Ukrainian people to safety across the Russian border. The Ukrainian government said around 40,000 people had been resettled against their will, calling it kidnapping and forced deportation.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said over 433,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Russia since February 24, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials said thousands were forcibly deported to Russian territory after Russian troops blocked safe passage to Ukrainian-held territory and took evacuees against their will to distant parts of Russia.
Speaking to CNN, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of forcing people fleeing Mariupol into Russia.
“Several thousand, tens of thousands had to evacuate towards the Russian Federation and we don’t know where they are, they didn’t leave any trace of documents,” the president told CNN.
“And among them are several thousand children, we want to know what happened to them. Are they healthy? Unfortunately, there is simply no information on this.”
Moscow has denounced claims of forced deportations as lies and claimed that Ukraine has hampered its efforts to “evacuate” people to Russia.
But CNN spoke to a number of Ukrainians who said they only had two choices: go to Russia or die. In interviews with 10 people, including Mariupol residents and their families, many describe how Russian and DPR soldiers rushed into air raid shelters and ordered those inside to leave immediately.
Nobody knew where they were taken. Five were eventually sent to Russia; Three have now made it.
Ukrainian and US officials and independent human rights monitors also claimed that Russian and separatist forces are taking tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians through so-called “filtration camps” where they are biometrically screened and their phones and documents confiscated before being sent to Russia.
Oleksander said the Russians also took away Kira’s documents and she was being provided with new ones in Russia.
Russian media, which have repeatedly downplayed the brutality of the conflict in Ukraine, have shown a video of Kira happily talking about what she is sometimes allowed to call her grandfather.
This is “proof” that she was not kidnapped, according to a Russian TV presenter, who described the claim as another “Ukrainian fake”.
Meanwhile, Oleksander has received an audio message from Kira telling him not to cry. But the young girl who lost her family, her freedom and her home in the Russian war cannot hold back her own tears.
“I haven’t seen you in so long,” she says. “I want to cry.”
CNN’s Nathan Hodge, Yulia Kesaieva, Eliza Mackintosh, Oleksandra Ochman, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Katie Polglase, Teele Rebane, Anastasia Graham-Yooll, and Amy Cassidy contributed to this report.