Kyiv, Ukraine CNN —
When Russian forces invaded their country in late February, Vladimir Bespalov and Maria Bespalaya feared their long-cherished dream of starting a family through adoption was over.
“I remember that morning of February 24 very clearly,” said Vladimir Bespalov, a 27-year-old railroad worker, of the first day of the war. “We thought we were too late. We realized that we were already in a state of war and we thought we could no longer adopt.”
Instead, the situation pushed the couple to try earlier, he said. “We’ve been waiting to make more money, have a better car, buy a house and build something to give to our kids first. But when the war started we thought why not adopt a child now and achieve these things together as a family.”
On that day, the couple, who lived in eastern Ukraine, published an appeal on social media.
“We want to adopt any boy or girl, newborn or child,” it said.
Weeks later, the news reached a volunteer helping refugees from Mariupol, a southern city that has become a symbol of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ruthless campaign to seize Ukrainian land at any cost.
Residents were forced underground for weeks while Russian troops bombarded the city with artillery. It is now a virtual wasteland with almost every building damaged or destroyed and an unknown number of dead lying under the rubble.
Among the survivors was 6-year-old Ilya Kostushevich, orphaned and alone. Both of his parents were killed in the first week of the war.
His mother was crushed by Russian artillery after leaving home to get food for her family, Bespalov and Bespalaya would later learn from the police.
Unaware of his wife’s fate, Ilya’s father went in search of her the next day, only to be killed by Moscow army shelling as well, police said.
Little Ilya told how he was left with a neighbor, where for weeks he found refuge in a cold, dark basement with strangers.
He got so hungry that he started eating his toys, Bespalaya said.
“The men were drinking alcohol and these neighbors’ children were bullying him. He was starving and cold,” Bespalaya told CNN in a hushed voice. She is careful not to bring up Ilya’s traumatizing experience unsolicited, but he told the woman he now calls “Mom” all about his horrific three weeks in the basement, she says.
Bespalov and Bespalaya are now Ilya’s legal guardians. They have been a small family for more than six months and plan to officially adopt him as soon as possible. Due to martial law, all adoption procedures in Ukraine are currently suspended.
Like all parents, the young couple fiercely protect Ilya, protecting him from the horrors of war as much as possible and trying to give him a sense of security and stability.
“You try to take your mind off the fighting and get involved with spending time with your child. We try to create memories of a normal childhood. Work takes time, but we spend every free minute together,” said Bespalov, who, being an important railway worker, was not drafted into military service.
But there is nothing normal about war. After posting their appeal on Instagram, the couple set up two spare rooms for the possible arrival of a child – one a children’s room with a white crib and blue bedding, the other fitted with a bunk bed and lots of toys.
Bespalaya had worked in an orphanage for several years and felt up for the challenge of raising a child, no matter the circumstances.
“I just stopped being afraid of adoption. I felt confident that we would have a child, and I felt confident that I could take care of everyone and handle their characters,” she told CNN.
But this plan was also destroyed by the war. Shortly after it started, the two had to flee their homeland of Sloviansk, a city in the Donetsk frontline region, to Kyiv.
“Our stability was gone. We both lost our jobs and our homes. We lost all our savings, we lost absolutely everything,” Bespalaya said.
“But we gained so much more.”
In April, they finally got the call they had been hoping for from a volunteer in Mariupol: There was a little boy without parents, could the couple take care of him?
The next morning they set out on the two-day drive to Dnipro, where Ilya found refuge to meet the boy who would become part of her family.
Back in Kyiv, they went through a complex, four-month process to become Ilya’s legal guardians that included interviews with therapists, many doctor visits, police background checks, and a state search to ensure the boy had no other living relatives. Various donors, including Shakhtar Donetsk Football Club, helped provide financial support that enabled the family to find a comfortable home.
“Now we have that love, that love that makes you family. We didn’t have that baby, but our love is real,” Bespalaya said while cuddling Ilya between her and Bespalov on a playground bench in Kyiv.
Despite their happiness as a new family unit, life for Ilya is tougher in the evenings when the capital is hit by rolling blackouts caused by Russia’s ongoing attacks on the power grid – leaving the family without power for hours.
“Sometimes he gets scared,” Bespalaya said. “He’s hysterical, and he’ll tell me it’s like he’s back in Mariupol, in the dark.”
But little Ilya is learning to cope with it. As he played with the couple in a candlelit living room during one of the power outages, he looked up and said, “I’m not afraid of the dark anymore. I know the light will come on again.”