lights in the dark

Everything falls apart up there, but the baby in the photograph sleeps soundly, wrapped up in a fleece blanket, with that placidity typical of newborns. It would seem that not even a bombshell could wake him up. And this is literal. The little boy, in the arms of his father, is the living image of hope in the midst of war disaster. He came into the world yesterday in the basement of a Kiev maternity hospital during one of the most furious attacks by Russian troops. Well seen, he was lucky. After all, despite being born underground, his mother was treated in a hospital. Others, many Ukrainian women, are giving birth in the midst of the darkness of war in harsh conditions, putting their lives and those of their children at risk.

UNFPA, the United Nations agency in charge of sexual and reproductive health, estimates that up to 80,000 Ukrainian women will give birth in the country in the next three months. Despite the fact that, to this day and although precarious, most of the health centers continue to function, “we are receiving heartbreaking reports of damaged hospitals in which it is difficult to guarantee deliveries with all the guarantees,” says the Spaniard Jaime Nadal , UNFPA representative in Ukraine and Belarus, in a video released by the agency.

According to the last part of this agency that depends on the UN, in recent nights there have been more than 80 births in Kiev. Many of them, in underground basements and even in subway stations where the population seeks refuge, in subhuman conditions, without the slightest hygienic guarantees and “without access to essential maternal health services,” say those responsible for the agency. , which have already reported cases of women who have perished in childbirth. “For all of them it will be a life-threatening experience, rather than a hopeful event,” they lament.

At least these children of war, these little ones who are born in the midst of terror, will never remember the darkest days of their existence. Yes, all those creatures who cannot understand to what extent their lives have changed in a week, why they have had to leave their homes, will. Unicef warns that half of the displaced in Ukraine are children and “their situation is getting worse by the minute.” “Many children have been injured and many more are deeply traumatized by the violence around them,” the United Nations agency denounces.
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13 children killed

In the midst of this barbarism, a fact that is directly unbearable. Thirteen children have been killed these days. It is an official figure, verified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The great obsession of Ukrainian parents is that their little ones do not suffer the same fate.

“I am very afraid for my children,” the Hispanic Liudmyla Dilenko admits to this newspaper through a WhatsApp note in which her little ones laugh and play in the background. The little one is three years old and Roman, the eldest, will be six tomorrow, on a rare birthday, sheltered in a Protestant church near Chernivzi. “Luckily, they are still very young, but when we had to leave Kiev, he did not understand anything, why we had to leave,” says the mother. “How do you explain all this to a child?” she asks herself.