A baby boy was born in the Ukrainian town of Novovolynsk in the early hours of yesterday morning. Why should that demand even a moment of your attention? Because of the dreadful circumstances in which the child, who has yet to be named, came into this world.
Only days before his birth, war had driven his father and heavily pregnant mother to flee Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
They had reached within a few miles of the Polish frontier when nature – hurried, no doubt, by the stress of their refugee status – overtook them. She went into labour.
And so it was that their son was born – but not in the regular maternity ward of the nearby hospital, but in a makeshift theatre in the unit’s bomb shelter basement, a space that is now shared with all other vulnerable patients.
To mark his arrival, the hospital yesterday posted this defiant message on its Facebook page: ‘Meet our newborn defender, 3.5kg, 55cms. On the fifth day of the war between Russia and Ukraine, a baby appeared at Novovolynsk hospital for a couple of immigrants from Kyiv.
Kateryna Suharokova holds her newborn son Makar in the basement of a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward and used as a bomb shelter in Mariupol, Ukraine
‘Alarm sirens are heard all over Ukraine, in Volyn [the district in which the hospital is located] as well. But life does not end even during the shelling. We wish the baby a peaceful sky.’
Thanks to Vladimir Putin, there are no peaceful skies in Ukraine today. And the country’s children – those who were not among the more than 600,000 refugees who had crossed national borders by this evening – are now living a bewildering and largely underground existence in cellars and on metro platforms as air-raid sirens wail.
The intensely moving – and disturbing – photographs on these pages show just that.
In the besieged Black Sea port of Mariupol, Kateryna Suharokova kisses her newborn son Makar in the basement of a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward and used as a bomb shelter. What will happen to them both?
The more heartbreaking image, perhaps, is from a shelter in an orphanage in the city of Kropyvnytskyi.
Many of the children there are sick. A tragic life grown worse. And this is playing out across the country.
In the besieged southern city of Kherson – surrounded by Russian forces which invaded from Crimea – two baby boys have been born in the maternity ward, which has also been moved into the hospital’s basement.
In the eastern city of Dnipro, ten babies have been born in one hospital since the start of the invasion.
Are these infants only the first of what could be an entire of generation of Ukrainians to be born either under direct threat of war or as refugees from their homeland?
Imagine what fear drove the Novovolynsk parents, particularly the mother, to take to the roads with no certain destination.
Knowing that hundreds of thousands of others were also fleeing and the route was jammed with traffic, the hotels full, a Russian assault possibly around the next bend.
Novovolynsk lies north of Lviv, 45 miles from Kyiv and only ten miles from the Polish border.
It is a former Soviet mining centre of 50,000 people. It is twinned with Britain’s own industrial town of Hartlepool.
It is also only 50 miles from the border with Belarus, whose military were yesterday reported to have joined the invasion.
The National Guard of Ukraine stated: ‘This is a shelter in a specialized orphanage in the city of Kropyvnytskyi in Ukraine. All the children there are orphans. Many are sick….’
Dr Oleg Shypelyk, senior physician at the Novovolynsk hospital, told the Mail that staff were responding as best they could to the situation. They would not be cowed.
‘We are currently organising a 24/7 creche in the hospital basement,’ he said.
‘It’s for the children of our staff so that their parents can work here around the clock without worrying too much about what is happening back at home.’
But where will these babies be allowed – be safe – to grow up? In their home country of Ukraine? Will there even be an independent Ukraine at the end of this barbaric war? Or will it be Poland or one of the many countries that are now opening their doors to the exodus. Why not Hartlepool?
A picture posted by Novovolynsk Hospital in Novovolynsk, a city in the North West of Ukraine, near to the Polish border, with the message ‘children of war’
They have been born into a world stood on its head.
Yesterday afternoon, in a side street of the gorgeous old town of Lviv – a Unesco world heritage site – I came across a queue of civilian men outside a firearms shop. They want to be armed if – or when – the Russian columns come.
Around the corner in Ruska Street, the stained glass windows of the Renaissance Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary have been boarded over to protect them from blasts.
As I write, the mournful howl of the warning siren begins again.
The indefatigable receptionist in our small hotel is banging on doors and shouting: ‘Come on! Quick! Get into the basement!’
This is how life begins for an increasing number of new Ukrainians in these catastrophic times.
