13-year-old Milena he is in pain. Her face, full of scars from the cheek to the neck. A teenage girl with brown hair tied in pigtails at the Children’s Hospital in Zaporizhia, southern Ukraine, is trying to recover from injuries to her mouth, tongue and many vertebrae caused by a bullet stuck in her neck.
The girl was injured when her family tried to flee Mariupol, the strategic port on the Sea of ​​Azov that Russian forces have been bombing and besieging since late February, her mother said. Their car, like most vehicles leaving the city, carried a “kids” banner.
Fortunately, no one else in the family was injured. The same Russian soldiers who wounded Milena then took her to the hospital, according to her mother, who did not give her name or more details.
Hundreds of thousands of people are trapped in Mariupol, trapped in basements, deprived of everything.
Thousands of vehicles full of civilians were finally able to leave for Zaporizhia last week, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last night that 100,000 people were still in the city, where the streets are full of corpses.
Milena is expected to fully recover. But not many other children are being treated at the Zaporizhia Children’s Hospital.
The hospital is located about 250 kilometers northwest of Mariupol and accommodates children from eastern and southern Ukraine – areas where fighting is fiercest and Russian forces have advanced more since the invasion began on February 24.
In the bed next to Milena, the life of five-year-old Vladislav hangs on a thread.
The child was shot in the abdomen as his family was leaving to escape the advance of Russian forces towards their village Polochi, between Mariupol and Zaporizhia.
Vladislav’s small breasts inflate and deflate with difficulty, with the help of an artificial respirator. Doctors are afraid he will not go out at night. If he escapes danger and survives he will have to wear a drainage bag for the rest of his life.
There are no relatives to watch Vladislav: they were also seriously injured by bullets. They are being treated at another hospital in the city.
Children born under the sounds of fire
“We have children with piercing head injuries, mutilated children, children with bullets in the abdomen, with bone fractures,” said Yuri Borzenko, the hospital’s chief physician. “I do not think anyone would want to see what we see.”
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 121 children have lost their lives and another 167 have been injured, according to the latest report given today by Lyudmila Denisova, the human rights commissioner in the Ukrainian Parliament. He said two children were killed last night by a Russian blow to a building in Rubichen, in the Luhansk region (east).
The city of Zaporizhia remains relatively safe compared to other cities in the country, although fighting is raging at close range and occasional explosions are heard from afar. Yellow adhesive tapes have been placed on the windows of the children’s hospital, to prevent crumbs in the event of an explosion nearby.
Sandbags are stacked in the corners of the building and a basement shelter has been set up, with metal beds where mothers can feed their babies. The most serious cases have been removed from the neonatal intensive care unit and transported to the basement because the equipment needed cannot be moved quickly.
This is the case of Misa, a two-week-old baby, with his face and fists clenched as if he were about to cry. The baby was born at the sound of gunfire in Tokmak, south of Zaporizhia, which is now controlled by Russian forces.
Due to lack of medical care, Misa was left without oxygen after complications during childbirth. He suffers from respiratory problems and brain damage that can make him disabled for the rest of his life.
Disabled for the rest of their lives
Ivan Anikin, head of the neonatal unit, explains that the hospital has been accepting injured children since 2014, when an armed conflict broke out in Donbas.
However, their number has increased dramatically after the Russian invasion and the staff is working non-stop. For safety, he now brings his 14-year-old daughter with him to the hospital, whose corridors sometimes resonate with screams of pain from young patients.
Most children who get here will be disabled for the rest of their lives, doctors say.
This is the case of 15-year-old Massa, who, like Vladislav, comes from a village in the Zaporizhia region.
The girl was returning home with her mother and sister on March 13, a beautiful sunny day when a Grad rocket landed nearby.
Her mother protected her two daughters with her body. They all survived.
But Massa lost her right leg in the bombing and her right arm was seriously injured. Her mother also lost her leg.
“After four operations, Massa is much better,” says her grandmother, Valentina Fechchenko. “But he panics as soon as he hears a loud noise.”
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