“I just want to see him as a child again”
In a small village, about one hour’s drive from the city of Kharkiv in Ukraine, not too far from the frontline where fighting still rages on, is a house with a triangular roof. The house is surrounded by rose bushes and vegetable beds.
“There was a big hole in the roof,” explains the boy who lives here, 12-year-old Ivan. “The bomb was sticking up out of the living-room floor.”
A kitten scurries past. The kitten’s name is Tom, explains Ivan's father, Sergey.
“That’s because we have so many Jerrys here,” he laughs.
“Come on in.”
24 February 2022.
That date is burnt into the memories of most of us.
For the people of Ukraine, it marks the difference
between war and peace,
between life and death.
Then, and now.
“This is Yulia’s childhood home,” continues Sergey.
“I lived nearby.”
Sergey and Yulia went to school together, and then became a couple 13 years ago, he recounts with a smile. One year later, Ivan, the eldest, came along. And then after a few more years his little sister Maria followed.
“We had a really happy family life,” says Yulia. “I stayed at home looking after the baby, and Ivan went to school. He was in Year 6. He loved maths, physics and sport. He used to play football with his friends at school.”
“We were going to play in a cup tournament,” says Ivan. “That was our dream. But now it’s impossible ...”
NOW
Ivan and Maria giggle together. She whispers something in her big brother’s ear, looks curiously over his shoulder, then they both break out in silent laughter. They quickly look round to see whether the grown-ups have noticed.
The family is sitting on chairs set up on chipboard in the hallway. Little sister Maria slides carefully down from her mother’s knee and walks over to the teddy bears lying on the temporary bed in the room next door.
Dad Sergey puts an arm round his son’s shoulder.
“I like building Lego,” says Ivan, “but I don’t have time anymore. Now I help Dad to repair the house.”
“Before the war, we were doing it up.”
He ends up virtually on the edge of his seat as he eagerly describes his room.
“I got a new bed, and I had lots of Lego! There was Ninjago and some Star Wars. And I had a few aeroplanes. But I don’t really like them so much.”
“The ceiling in my room was half grey and half white. I want my room to be like it was before.”
Now the family lives in a small annex in the back garden. They have a kitchen and a room to live in, but no bathroom. The children bathe in a trough, explains Yulia.
“We hope that everything will be ready for when winter arrives,” she says. “We can’t afford to fix the guest room and kitchen at the moment, so we’ll just have to close the doors to those rooms.”
Sergey is rebuilding his family’s house, with plenty of help from his son. When Ivan is not doing his school work, he is usually at his father’s side.
“Anyway, now I know how to put up plasterboard,” laughs Ivan.
“But the funniest thing of all is when something goes wrong. One time we were trying to put up plasterboard, and we couldn’t have got it more wrong if we tried!”
THEN
“We were afraid during the time leading up to 24 February. We knew that the situation wasn’t stable. But we didn’t want to believe that anything would happen,” recalls Yulia.
The family was asleep that morning. Sergey woke first, having heard a noise he didn’t quite recognise. Then Yulia’s mother phoned, asking them to get their things together and evacuate.
“But we didn’t panic,” continues Yulia.
“Not until we heard the explosions.”
Ivan recalls:
“I woke up at six and saw Mum packing our things. I asked what was going on. ‘Go back to sleep, it’s okay’ she said. But I couldn’t. I asked again. Then she told me that war had started.”
“Yes, we told it as it was,” adds Yulia.
“Not everything all at once, but gradually. It was impossible to hide it – the children saw and heard everything.”
“We were shocked when we realised that war had started,” she continues.
“All we knew about war was what we had read in books. We didn’t know what it was really like.” She meets Sergey’s gaze. He nods silently.
She continues: “What we were most worried about was the lives of our children.”
The situation in Ukraine:
It is estimated that around 3.7 million people are internally displaced within Ukraine.
There is major damage to buildings and infrastructure across the whole country.
“We need to get a number of long-term solutions in place,” says Artem Kulichenko, who works on shelter and sanitation projects with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in eastern Ukraine. “There needs to be more focus on reconstruction, and I hope these efforts can be stepped up.”
He explains that support for the rebuilding of houses – those that can be saved – can be divided into two categories: minor and medium. “But almost everything is ‘medium’. The destruction is so extensive.”
Ukraine is facing the most expensive reconstruction project in the world. In March 2023, the World Bank estimated the costs to amount to an inconceivable USD 411 billion.
The infrastructure to supply Ukraine with electricity, heat and gas has mostly not been repaired yet, and the population are preparing for a cold winter.
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At home during the war
To begin with, the family stayed in their home. On the first night they tried to stay up in the house, but they soon realised it was impossible. The bombing was too heavy. They dressed the children and went down to the basement. It was winter. Ice-cold. Sergey put up a little tent, hoping that the children would be able to keep warm. But Maria became ill. They had to give her old medicine that they still had in the house. All the pharmacies, all the shops, were closed. Each morning they tried to go up to the house.
“We were afraid to let the children go up out of the basement. They saw and heard missiles.”
“The older children especially, like Ivan, saw everything,” Yulia says.
Ivan explains guardedly:
“The most difficult thing was being afraid all the time that something was going to happen.”
After a month, they decided to leave. They packed their identity papers and clothes for the children. They went as quickly as they could to some relatives in another village nearby.
“Finally we could give the children a bath, for the first time in a month,” says Yulia with a smile.
There were now 12 family members living together in one room. The hail of bombs was constant there as well. Some shops were open, but it was impossible to move around the town. After a while, an acquaintance tipped them off about a school some distance away that was housing fleeing families. They decided to go there.
“We were terrified. Didn’t know what to expect. We knew we were going to the school, but we had to find alternative routes. The shooting never let up,” recalls Yulia.
Once at the school, the family found a little peace. They lived in a classroom – six adults and six children.
A few months went by. The families tried to establish new routines. A teacher used to drop by to do some teaching, including Ukrainian lessons. They had a toilet, gas and heating, but no bathroom.
Then one night there was a phone call: their house had been bombed.
“We didn’t tell Ivan to begin with,” recalls Yulia.
“But I guessed,” Ivan says quietly.
“When I saw Mum crying, I guessed what had happened. But I didn’t fully understand to begin with.”
“We didn’t know what to do. How would we be able to rebuild? It was tough to realise that our old life had gone,” says Yulia.
“I cried all the time. I was on fire inside.”
The family returned to an empty shell. Only the walls were standing. The triangular roof had been demolished, the bricks were black with soot, and the walls were soaked wet following the firefighters’ desperate attempts to save what they could. And then there was the bomb, the one that was still sticking out of the living-room floor.
Yulia recounts:
“Maria started to cry when we went in. She walked through the house, saying: ‘This is the room where I slept ... that is the window where I sat and waited for Dad to come home.’”
“One of the things I remember best from the old house is the birthday parties – both mine and Maria’s,” says Ivan. “We used to invite friends and family for a meal and a party. It was great fun.”
His mother explains:
“It was especially hard for Ivan that the house burned down. When I said that we might not be able to repair it, that it was too badly damaged, he was absolutely determined: ‘We will rebuild it.’”
She adds with a smile: “And he’s quite stubborn, so he often gets what he wants.”
“Will I become famous now?”
Yulia moves us over to a bench next to the fence. Right in front of us, there is a pile: the ruins of the house. A burnt-out window frame. A blue sofa. Yulia becomes serious.
“Ivan is such a good boy. He is so kind, and so polite. Not just to us, but also to strangers. He helps us so much, with Maria, and he helps his father with the house.”
“He’s grown up. He’s become a man over these last few months. When the war started, he was a little boy. He’s even changed his perception of the world. Before, as a child, everything was fun and games. Now all he thinks about is the house, the renovation, his room.”
“I am so sad that all this has happened to him. He has lost his whole childhood – it’s been stolen from him. I just want to see him as a child again.”
As we prepare to leave, the interpreter comes over, with a bashful Ivan behind him. “Ivan has a few questions for you as well,” they say.
And there, for just a moment, while we try to explain when Norwegians learn English and whether Ivan will become famous in Norway now, we see it.
The child the war took away.
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