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Scarred by War, Ukraine’s Children Face Years of Trauma


KYIV, Ukraine – Using his little blue crutches, 7-year-old Daniil Avdieienko points towards two dark brown stains on the cement floor of the entrance to his apartment building.

The sticker on the right, just inside the door, is his blood, he explained. Then he pointed to the remaining bloodstain: “This is my mother’s.”

Daniil and his parents were running to a bunker in the center of Chernihiv, a northern city where fighting took place in the early days of the war, when a shrapnel pierced his back. In the end, he had to have his intestines removed 60 centimeters long, or nearly 2 feet. Seven months later, he’s still recovering from his injuries, and will likely need some more surgery, as well as his parents, who both suffered serious leg injuries.

But while his physical trauma is healing, he is still grappling with the psychological trauma of the attack.

“I get scared when the sirens go off,” he said softly as he sat with his parents, Nataliia Avdieienko, 32, and Oleksandr Avdieienko, 33, referring to air raid alarms warning of potential attacks. of Russia. “I’m afraid because tanks might come.”

The conflict in Ukraine has brought pain and hardship to tens of thousands of civilians, but among the worse consequences is that it affects a generation of children like Daniil, who will have to face their own trauma. physical and psychological pain, many for the rest of their lives. For those who have suffered serious injuries or lost a parent, the road ahead will be extremely challenging, experts say, as long-term psychological and medical support can be elusive in a country family is in conflict.

Daniil’s parents say his behavior has changed in notable ways. Now, he is clutching a teddy bear on which he performed “surgery,” they said, a reminder of many of his own medical procedures.

He’s lost interest in the matchbox cars he used to love, his father said. Instead, he played war games with his stuffed toys, where they sometimes fought against Russian tanks and sometimes killed imaginary zombies. She doesn’t like to leave her mother. Thunder scared him.

“It’s not like this before the war,” Avdieienko said.

However, Daniil has also come a long way since the attack in March, thanks in part to his mother receiving intensive care from Ohmadyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv. Immediately after the attack, family members were taken to three different hospitals, but it was not until April that they were reunited at Ohmadyt, the country’s top children’s hospital. There, Daniil was able to meet specialist doctors and psychologists, before being released and returned home to Chernihiv at the end of the summer.

Dmytro Holovachuk, one of the orthopedic surgeons who treated Daniil, said pediatricians here are increasingly treating injuries they haven’t seen in children in peacetime. The high velocity and destructive power of modern weapons can leave children with extensive and complex damage to bones and soft tissues.

Dr Holovachuk said: “We don’t have any experience with how to treat such serious injuries in children, adding that doctors around the country are now sharing their expertise and regularly learn new treatment methods, sometimes with international guidance.

Dr Holovachuk said he was equally concerned about how the war had affected the psyche of the country’s young people. In addition to being injured themselves, many have lost parents or other family members.

“These events will definitely affect an entire generation of children, that’s for sure,” he said. “These kids don’t have the ability to study properly, they don’t feel comfortable in their homes, they don’t have the ability to eat well.”

Olena Anopriienko, director of the hospital’s psychology department, said staff were trying to instill a sense of normalcy and security as much as possible. Children stay longer than attend onsite “Superhero School” to keep up with their studies and participate in weekly activities, like concerts and painting classes, that lift their spirits.

Many of these young people suffer from severe anxiety or PTSD, she said.

“If it’s a war trauma, it’s very difficult to give that child a sense of security,” she said. “Because the child understands that the war is not over yet.”

Despite their challenges, many children are determined to overcome, and even brave. Maryna Ponomariova, 6 years old, has worked closely with psychologists, physical therapists and teachers since she arrived at Ohmadyt hospital this summer, weeks after a horrific May 2 attack on her home in the southern Kherson region.

Her left leg had to be amputated below the knee because of a shrapnel wound, and she is currently learning to walk.

Maryna grinned, her tongue thrusting into the gap left by her two missing front teeth, and as she walked up the hallway, a tiny prosthetic was fitted into her right leg. She walks with determination, and with the support of her favorite rehabilitation doctor, Nazar Borozniuk, who makes her laugh even as she completes difficult exercises.

Her mother, Nataliia, says it is enduring positivity that has brought her and her family this far. Ponomariova.

“The doctor we are working with now, he told us the truth, he told us it was going to be difficult,” she said. “It is difficult to make prosthetics for small children, but there is no other way. ”

“She has faced and accepted the fact that she will have to wear iron legs, she understands that she has to move on and that she will be fine,” added Ms. Ponomariova, 41.

However, a series of strikes in central Kyiv in recent weeks, close enough to be heard clearly at their makeshift housing complex, have shaken Maryna, her mother said.

Mrs Ponomariova said of the bombing: “When she saw this, it hit her again. “The psychologist worked with her, but then it all turned upside down. She was screaming that morning.”

While anguish has come to children across the country, those living near the front lines in the south and east have experienced some of the worst of the war.

Kateryna Iorhu, 13, sits on the couch in the newly rented apartment she shares with her aunt, grandmother and sister in Kyiv, lifting the legs of her lilac sweatpants to indicate where an explosion ripped her big array meat from her bones.

Pieces of metal shrapnel cut beneath her skin like small pebbles. They got there on their own in April, when Kateryna, from a village in the Donetsk region, was attacked while she was trying to flee with her family.

But Kateryna and her sister Yuliia, 9, carry an even more painful burden. The girls were at a train station in Kramatorsk in April with their mother, Maryna Lialko and their aunt, waiting to make their way to safety in the west of the country, when a rocket hits the crowd stay out.

Yuliia and her aunt are inside the station. A stranger shielded Kateryna with his body, potentially saving her life even if he lost his own. The family found their mother’s body in the city morgue the next day.

Maryna Lialko raised the girls alone after their father left the family, their grandmother, Nina Lialko, said.

“She was for these two girls,” she said.

Kateryna was discharged this fall from Ohmadyt hospital, where she received psychiatric and physical therapy, and the girls are now in Kyiv living with their grandmother and aunt.

The aunt, Olha Lialko, said she had seen a change in their personalities. Kateryna is increasingly introverted; She talks very little and tries to maintain eye contact. Yuliia still couldn’t fully comprehend the loss.

“Katya is very self-contained; she keeps it all to herself,” says Olha Lialko. “Yuliia misses her mother very much. She needs attention, she loves to be cuddled.”

The family is trying to help the girls with the loss proceedings. And sometimes they see girls they knew before the war.

They dyed their hair wild colors and played with makeup. They fight like the only sisters they can, and stick together for the company.

But no one knows what will come next for them. Their lives are at a standstill. They go to school online and have few friends in the new city. The family could not return home to Donetsk but did not want to stay in Kyiv.

“It would be very difficult for them to live without her,” their grandmother said. “This life has no meaning at all.”

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contribution report

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