In the early hours of last Wednesday morning, I was awakened by explosions and the building I was sleeping in seemed to vibrate. This was the result of Russia firing a barrage of hypersonic missiles into Kiev, a murderous retort to the meeting taking place at that very moment in Washington between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Joe Biden.
Fortunately – and through the use of US Patriot interceptor missiles – no one was killed in this attack, the most intense attack of its kind on Kiev since the first days of the full-scale invasion almost two years ago. But numerous people were injured, including children.
When I heard and felt the explosions, I immediately thought of a child I got to know well. His name is Yehor. We have been hosting this adorable Ukrainian boy, now 11 years old, and his mother Vera since July 2022.
Yehor's favorite playground in Kiev had been hit by a Russian bomb in the first weeks of the war; and as Vera said to my wife when she arrived in England: “I had to decide whether to act as a patriot or as a mother.”
I realized that Yehor was traumatized by these bombings. And the reason I thought of him in the darkness that morning was that he and Vera had just returned to Kiev for two weeks to spend the Christmas season with his father, Vitaliy, who had been living alone in their house.
Children from an orphanage in the Donetsk region of Ukraine eat a meal at a camp in Zolotaya Kosa, southwest Russia
Dominic Lawson looks at Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kiev
Dominic Lawson interviews President Zelensky's children's rights advisor, Daria Gerasymchuk
A day later they gave me a wonderful dinner in their apartment, high up in a huge Soviet-era apartment block. I couldn't help but notice how vulnerable it seemed, with glass windows that were much thinner than the ultra-strengthened version at the hotel I was using (where all the US Embassy staff now live).
The next day, Vera told me that during the almost continuous attack by Iranian-made drones that began about two hours after I left, they again moved into the windowless public corridor outside their apartment – a harbinger of another sleepless night.
It is hardly surprising that many millions of Ukrainian children are now believed to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – or what we used to call “shock”.
One of the youngest so affected is Sviatoslav, now two but only a few months old when his mother, Anna Zaitseva, rushed with him to what she thought was the safest place in her hometown of Mariupol, 24 hours after the invasion.
This was the Azov Valley Iron and Steel Works, a gigantic power plant built under the Soviet regime and with shelters designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Her husband, Kirilo, was employed at the steel mill but had previously been in the military and joined the soldiers there in a heroic but doomed defense.
Now 26-year-old Anna, whose job was as a French teacher at a school, told me how she sang lullabies to her little boy when her underground room shook under the impact of Russian forces' “bunker-busting” bombs.
Yehor and Dominic near the monument to the victims of Russian aggression during the war
The mayor's office in Kiev and Anna Zaitseva, whose husband was one of the Azov Valley defenders captured by the Russians
11-year-old Illya Matvienko, center, is pictured with Olena Matvienko, 65
“In the early hours of last Wednesday morning I was woken up by explosions and the building I was sleeping in seemed to vibrate. “This was the result of Russia firing a barrage of hypersonic missiles into Kiev,” writes Dominic Lawson
But when Svyatoslav's baby food ran out – and food became scarce for everyone – Anna, with her child in her arms, joined the civilians who surrendered. She went through a “filtration camp” and told me about her interrogation by the Russian security service FSB.
“They forced me to strip naked because they were looking for swastika tattoos and claimed we were 'Nazis.'” I actually have a tattoo, in French: “La vie est belle.” The Russians went crazy: they said it was German and proved that I must be a Nazi.'
Eventually she and Sviatoslav were released through the Red Cross, and they now live in Berlin – although she was in Kiev during the week of my stay and kindly stepped in as an interpreter for all the interviews I conducted with children.
Anna told me that she had learned that her husband had been injured in the final battle, but in the 19 months since Kirilo and the other “Azov Valley defenders” surrendered to the Russians, “I have nothing from him or about him Heard.” I don’t even know if he’s alive or not. But if he isn't… well, then the best death is to die defending those you love.'
And her child? “I think he has post-traumatic stress disorder, he covers his ears when there's a loud noise. But otherwise he seems very wise, as if he were 75 years old.'
Later, I visited a children's rehabilitation center that treats young people whose lives were destroyed by Vladimir Putin's war.
There I met Elena Matveenko and, in a separate room, her grandson Ilya, now 11 years old. Elena, who turns 65 next month, told me how her daughter had been killed in the Russian bombing of Mariupol, but the Russians not only “took away her body” but also Ilya, alive if seriously injured.
Dominic Lawson pictured with Yehor and his mother Vera on the terrace of Parliament House in 2022
Dominic Lawson spoke to 16-year-old Daryna Brezgalova and her aunt Olexandra Petrov, 40, whose house was washed away after the sabotage at the Kakhovka Dam
He was transported to the city of Donetsk, held by Russian separatists, where he would be transformed into a good little Russian. She knew nothing about where he was until her nephew in Austria called her and told her he had seen Ilya in a Russian video saying the boy had been “saved” from the alleged Nazis of Mariupol.
Somehow she was brought into contact with the mysterious billionaire and former Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, who then acted after negotiations with officials from Ukraine and Russia to return Ilya to his grandmother in April 2022.
It was a kind of miracle, Elena told me, adding: “Ilya returned on Easter Day.” But Ilya's own account – which I saw when he was interviewed by a Ukrainian documentary film crew – was almost unbearably tragic.
It appears that his mother had died in his arms as they hugged each other closely.
“Our house was bombed, destroyed, we were in the ruins and a neighbor said we should stay at her house.”
“But as we were running over, another rocket hit and shrapnel hit my leg, tearing it down to the tendons.”
“Another fragment hit mom in the head, but she helped me.” She was still able to walk while I hopped on one leg. Then we just lay there together in the neighbor's house. But that evening my mother died. Just as. Well, because of the blood loss. And the next day the Russians came and took me away. And they operated on my leg, but not completely under anesthesia, it was very painful.
“Then they wanted to brainwash me or something like that.” I was told I should only write and speak in Russian. A doctor came to me and said: “They won't say 'Glory to Ukraine,' but 'Glory to Ukraine as part of the Russian Federation.' It was very strange.”
But for the Kremlin this is not strange at all. Putin has long been concerned by the demographic decline of his vast territory, particularly among those considered ethnic Russian: According to a Warsaw Institute report, “the ratio of deaths to births among ethnic Russians has increased as much as 2.5 in recent years 1″. .
This, as well as Putin's belief that Ukrainians are just Russians who are being led to believe otherwise, explains the program of mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children from conquered territories: the number is in the tens of thousands, mostly held in a network of prisoners in at least 43 camps with “re-education” and adoption facilities”.
For this reason, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Putin and his “Presidential Representative for Children’s Rights”, Maria Lvova-Belova.
In the same building where I met Ilya and his grandmother, I also interviewed Lvova-Belova's Ukrainian counterpart.
This is Daria Gerasymchuk, President Zelensky's adviser on children's rights. Thirty-six-year-old Gerasymchuk, a little battleship of a woman who has always worked in this field, vividly explained to me the Russian strategy: “After they kill the parents, they bring the children to the Russian Federation.” For this purpose They brainwash the children they kidnap in special camps. They are then placed with Russian families.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanks people for their support for Ukraine
“They want to destroy the future of Ukraine.” They want Ukraine to be a country without a future, because our children are our future. This is a form of genocide. In total, around 745,000 children who were in sovereign Ukraine are now on Russian territory.
“And Russian officials, some of whom have received kidnapped children whose parents were killed in the war, say how lucky they are to have rescued them!”
The reason I mentioned to Gerasymchuk was Putin's desire to reverse Russia's own population implosion.
“Yes, I agree, they want to solve Russia's demographic problem by taking in Ukrainian children.” But there is also a military aspect. Boys aged 14 to 17 in Russia are encouraged to join so-called “national patriotic camps,” a type of youth army. They need more young men to be trained as future soldiers to fight against Ukraine.
“So stolen Ukrainian children are brainwashed to fight Ukrainians. Because Russia doesn't have enough young men to fight its wars.”
Russia has also tried to ruin Ukraine's future, not only through its child abduction policies, but also through sheer destructiveness: most notably the sabotage of the Khakovka Dam in June. Although this was intended to hinder the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive, it also had the effect of destroying large swaths of farmland. It has been described as an “ecocide.”
In Kiev, I met 16-year-old Daryna Bryzgalova from the port city of Kherson, who told me how the country house that she and her relatives valued as a holiday home was “destroyed by the water released in the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam” . We had some beautiful cherry trees, apricot trees and grape vines. Everything destroyed.
“And all the animals in my favorite zoo, hundreds, drowned. “I had so many lovely visits there.”
In Kherson, when it was under Russian occupation (it was subsequently recaptured by Ukrainian forces), this child also saw what Anna Zaitseva experienced: “Sometimes the Russians would stop a bus and ask everyone to take off their clothes to see if They had Nazi tattoos “on their bodies.”
It's terrible to imagine the impact all this has on a child.
But Daryna seems to be someone who can somehow endure such horrors as constant bombing (which Kherson still has to endure) with ease. “I'm so used to missile attacks. By the sound you can tell which one is us and which one is them. And if you hear a whistling sound, that's good news because it means it's not directly above you. “I’ve become an expert on artillery sounds.”
In a way, my young friend Yehor has also become an expert. In the family apartment, he showed me on his smartphone a list of all the air raid alerts since the moment the Russians began their attempt to turn the homeland he knew only as an independent country back into a subordinate satrapy of Moscow. He scrolled on and on…
One evening last week, as we walked through the streets with Yehor's parents, the air raid sirens wailed again. Coincidentally, our destination was a basement restaurant, so a safe place. Yehor said nothing, but I sensed his concern. Later I asked if he had been scared.
“Yes,” he answered, “but if you say out loud what you're afraid of, then it will happen.” So you…' and then he made a movement in which he ran his finger over his lips.
At this point, I found it difficult to hide my own feelings. Not least because it is obvious that Putin will do his malicious and spiteful best to make the Christmas holidays a special form of hell for the people of Kiev – especially given the fact that so many Ukrainian refugee mothers and children are too will return home for this festival that celebrates the founding of a family.
I am now safely back in England and will be enjoying the cozy joys of Christmas with my own family. Not since the Blitz, when my late father was about Yehor's age, has our own capital seen what Yehor now faces.
But since Christmas is a time when we devote our thoughts primarily to the joy of children, please think of the children of Ukraine this year. I know that it will be me – and one thing above all.