Our reporters followed children doubly struck by fate. Born with disabilities or in a poor family, most of them were rejected by their parents. A handful of women and men are busy comforting them under the bombs and evacuating those who can. Manon Quérouil-Bruneel, our special correspondent in Ukraine with photoreporter Alvaro Canovas, tells us how this moving report was made.
How did you discover the situation of these children? By meetings on site or is it a subject that you had decided to deal with beforehand?
We were contacted by an NGO who explained to us the logistical difficulties faced by the people who supervise these children who have to be taken to safe areas before the towns are surrounded by the Russians and bombarded. In the specialized centers, the supervisors do not want to tear themselves away from their own families to evacuate the children. But they also have an administrative problem that I mention in my article: the Ukrainian government is worried about the risks of trafficking minors and therefore imposes passes and administrative complications that delay the evacuation process. The NGO asked us to come and document the situation of these orphans. On the spot, we were expected by a team with which we were able to go both to the nursery and to the center for handicapped children, which was evacuated.
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Are these traffic risks that the government fears proven?
There have indeed been disappearances of minors, children and adolescents who cross the border, alone and whose whereabouts are unknown today. There are undoubtedly war profiteers who are on the lookout for these situations. This is a real risk, but the problem for the NGO is that this precautionary principle is applied even in the emergency of war, with trade-offs that are difficult to make. Because, clearly, these children who remain in bombarded zones are in danger of death.
You describe moving scenes. Like that little boy who asks you if you’re “a friend” or if you’re going to kill him. What psychological state are they in?
All of these children are already affected by a mental disorder. This little boy has autism. We feel that they are losing the only landmarks they had. Some rocked very hard back and forth, others covered their ears and shouted. And there was also the difficulty of knowing how long these handicapped children were going to be able to hold in a bus, until the border. Stops should be planned when possible. As for the physically disabled children, they need ambulances, some are completely bedridden. It’s a very big logistics.
What solutions exist to help them? Is adoption possible?
The simplest thing is for specialized centers abroad to volunteer to welcome the children, like the one in the Czech Republic which received those we followed. It is necessary to be able to guarantee the Ukrainian government a base, via recognized institutes which send their statutes, in order to avoid falling on dubious associations. The problem is that most of these people hope that the war will not go on forever and that the exiled children will return. But it doesn’t take all the way. These children will probably never return to Ukraine.
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When we see what people are struggling with, we journalists, we just feel like we’re doing our part of the job and we tell ourselves that it’s still not enough
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Mykola Kuleba, former commissioner for children’s rights in Ukraine, very invested in these evacuation operations, explains that the orphans recovered by the Russians undergo brainwashing and serve as a breeding ground for the army. Is this fear justified?
It is difficult to verify. But we know that orphanages in Russia take in many children who are not orphans but have alcoholic parents or parents who are too poor to take care of them and choose to entrust them to the State, which disposes of these children as it sees fit. Vulnerable, they are probably easier to indoctrinate to join the ranks of the Russian army. But the evidence is lacking.
How did you experience this report alongside particularly vulnerable children?
For the moment, we are still in the urgency of the report. It’s when we take a break that the emotion is likely to overwhelm us. We were very moved by the uprooting of these children from their educators. They were very tight-knit. These are women who have made the choice since the start of the war to stay with these children, even if it means giving up being with their own family. It’s an impressive commitment. It was heartbreaking to see them say goodbye thinking it’s better for the kids but not knowing if they’ll ever see them again. And these babies of a few months condemned to live in a cellar, it breaks the heart.
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The longer Russian troops on the ground trample, the higher the cost of war for civilian populations
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What about threats to journalists? There were several deaths and injuries. He said to himself that they would be particularly targeted by the Russian army.
In Kharkiv, a city close to the Russian border, things are constantly breaking out and we live in a converted shelter. We see people coming to dig through the rubble to recover memories of their former lives… It’s not journalists who are particularly targeted, it’s civilian populations as a whole. Our working conditions are difficult, but when we see what people are struggling with and the war effort made by the entire Ukrainian population, we journalists, we just feel like we are doing our part of the job and we say to ourselves that is still not enough.
Are you already hard at work for the next report?
We work on site in Kharkiv. It is the second largest city in the country and is constantly being shelled by artillery. It was partly emptied of its inhabitants but many remained and resisted. What we have been realizing for some time now is that the more the troops on the ground falter, the higher the cost of the war for the civilian populations. Since they can’t take Kharkiv, they bomb and destroy. And those who stayed are either old people who do not plan to leave the places where they have lived, or young people who are all volunteers for the distribution of food and medicine. But there are also people who are “documenting” what is happening right now to support war crimes charges. In particular, we saw shrapnel from cluster bombs that fell on the houses. These crimes will not be very difficult to prove.
To make a donation to the children of Ukraine: alliance4childrenukraine.org
Find the report by Manon Quérouil-Bruneel and Alvaro Canovas in Paris Match n°3803 of 26