Before the war erupted in Ukraine, Svitlana Kylivnyk was a mother of two, running a firewood business with her husband near the small city of Pohrebyshche.
Life was good. The family kept chickens and ducks. Her elder daughter Alla was studying law in Kyiv and her younger daughter Olena was about to graduate from high school; she was looking forward to her prom.
Now Svitlana, 41, is living in a recreation centre in Rudki in southeastern Poland. She’s become the mother of nine, having fled across the border with her own two girls and seven of her friends’ children.
“When the war broke out my mum started to talk to parents from other families because of the unbelievable, horrible things that were happening,” explains Alla, 21, who speaks fluent English and Polish.
“She couldn’t fight so she believed her role was to bring these children to safety so their parents could continue to help our struggle in Ukraine.”
Once in Poland, Svitlana applied to the court to become the legal guardian of all of the children in her care. Their fathers, like all men of fighting age, are unable to leave Ukraine. Their mothers, working in hospitals, emergency services and the power sector, see their work as crucial to the war effort.
The mother of 13-year-old Yaroslav and 8-year-old Sasha is a friend of Svitlana and an ambulance dispatcher in Pohrebyshche, just over 100 miles southwest of the capital Kyiv.
Once reassured that her children would be safe, she was determined to stay, says Alla: “There was no way she could walk out of the hospital. My mum is helping her, which means she can serve our country.”
For her son Yaroslav, fleeing Ukraine meant not only leaving his parents, school and friends behind but also a promising football career - the teenager was signed to the top-flight Ukrainian team FC Nyva Vinnytsi and dreamt of a future as a professional player.
Svitlana, who sleeps in a dorm room used in normal times by Polish children on activity holidays, looks weary. She’s determined to be a good parent to all the children and is sensitive to their individual needs.
“It was really important to Yaroslav to continue with a professional team so we’ve helped him do that – now he’s playing for a good team here in Rudki,” says Svitlana proudly, her ‘adopted’ son resting his head on her shoulder as Alla translates her words.
But in the chaos of their departure, Yaroslav had left behind his precious football boots. Hearing his son was to start playing again, his father made a mercy dash to the border with the boots. Svitlana arranged for them to be collected – sending back a carload of relief goods and two flak jackets that she’d raised the money for in Poland.
‘Their eyes don’t look like a three year old’
The children here are among the 5 million Ukrainian children who have been displaced by the war in just six weeks. “They have been forced to leave everything behind: Their homes, their schools, and often, their family members,” said Unicef Emergency Programmes Director Manuel Fontaine, speaking at the UN Security Council.
Life at the Goloborze centre in Rudki is comfortable. Families are served three meals a day on long trestle tables in the dining room and their children are enrolled in local state schools.
While they are safe, everyone here bears the scars of war- the fear of low-flying planes and not knowing when and where the bombs would drop.
“The three-year-old children here, their eyes don’t look like a three year old. They were forced to grow up because they have already been through a lot of pain,” Svitlana says.
“Russian troops are evil. They were attacking civilians, children, schools, whole families. It’s an awful tragedy, a tragedy for everyone,” she says, her eyes filled with tears and her jaw set in anger.
Twenty-four-year old Natalia has a blunt-cut fringe and startling pale green eyes. She escaped from her village near the city of Vilnyansk in southeast Ukraine with her children Anya, five and Ola, one.
She sheds tears of fury as she speaks: “When we started hearing shooting close to our village my husband and my parents decided to get us on a train going to Zaporizhya and then to Lviv. When we left we thought we would feel relief but that’s not how it feels, says Natalia, her voice trembling. “It’s unbearable to think that our loved ones are still there.”
‘When will we go home?’
The children must adapt to a new environment, a new language, new schools. Most arrived with just a small backpack and they make do with the few clothes and belongings they carried with them. They keep asking when they will go home and no one can answer.
The missed milestones hurt. For two of Svitlana’s young charges it was being separated from their mother on her birthday. For 17-year-old Olena, it was missing out her much-anticipated school prom – buying a dress, being with her friends.
“My daughter was in the last class at school, dreaming of going to university in Ukraine. Now she can’t even have her prom. She’s in Poland and it’s a different school system,” says Svitlana. “She was really upset about this and for two weeks fell into a kind of depression.”
Also swept up under Svitlana’s wing is Ivana, Alla’s best friend from Kyiv. When Alla’s father drove to pick her up from Kyiv at the start of the war, Ivana came too. She doesn’t want to speak directly; her story is difficult and painful as her family trapped in Kherson in Russian-occupied Ukraine, where residents report food shortages and rising levels of repression and criminality by Russian forces.
The two friends keep a close eye on the news on their phones, looking in horror at pictures of the mangled wreckage of Friday’s missile strike on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, which killed more than 50 people, including families trying to flee Ukraine.
Ivana is now terrified about what will happen to her family. There could be more fighting if Ukrainian forces try to recapture the city. “Ivana’s family has prepared everything to leave, but they can’t leave. It is too dangerous for them,” says Alla.
Svitlana seethes with a controlled rage at the destruction, the families ripped apart. “I personally can’t talk about forgiveness after what they have done to my family and all the families that have been destroyed and killed, and the homes where people once lived.”
Her role now is to look after her new family, for as long as it takes. “What is the future of our children?” she asks. “These are everyone’s children.”
