“Grief camps” help Ukrainian children face the loss of parents

YURI NECHIPORENKO couldn’t see much of the soldier who killed his father: just the eyes and nose through the balaclava. Father Ruslan, 47, and son Yuri, then 15, had cycled down Tarasovskaya Street in Bucha to check out a rumour that humanitarian aid had arrived in the famished satellite town north of Kyiv. The soldier stopped them and asked what they were doing. Hands aloft to show they were not carrying weapons, they tried to explain, but he started shooting. Ruslan fell to the ground. Yuri, shot through his arm, fell too. Two more bullets skimmed his crown, passing through his hoodie. The boy hugged the ground, playing dead, while the blood of his dying father trickled against his body. He ran when he saw the soldier had left.

Yuri is still tormented by that grey winter day, 20 months ago. Across Ukraine, tens of thousands of children like him are coping with the loss of parents in harrowing circumstances. The exact number is secret, since it correlates with the number of soldiers killed in action. But the trauma casts a devastating shadow. “It’s frightening to think what the next generation will look like,” says Oksana Lebedeva, a businesswoman turned philanthropist who has organised “grief camps” to help rehabilitate over 300 Ukrainian children.