Suddenly and violently, their childhoods were shattered. No child should have to live in a war zone. No child should have to bear witness to the murder of their mother. Some stopped talking. Others endured long rehabilitation for physical wounds in hospitals. We spoke to half a dozen Ukrainian orphans who witnessed their mothers killed in Russian drone or missile attacks. They are the hardest cases in a generation of children growing up scared by war, though many young people in Ukraine will have to make their way in life without one or both parents. We asked about interests, hobbies, plans and coping in times of terrible uncertainty, of facing the future and moving on.

Katia and Yulia

It’s been a busy week of packing for the Iorgu sisters, 16-year-old Katia and 12-year-old Yulia. Like millions of Ukrainians displaced by hostilities, they are used to moving. Katia piled her stuff in 9 boxes and 5 bags and Yulia with in 5 boxes and the girls changed their home for the fourth time since the beginning of the full-scale war in 2022. This time, they had no regrets -- it felt too crowded with two girls and their grandmother and aunt in a tiny, rented apartment on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kyiv, and too far from downtown.

Tall, slim and soft-spoken Katia could not stop smiling on Thursday, the day they finally moved, as if it were her long-awaited birthday party. For the first time in her life, she finally had her own room: She unpacked her canvases and paints for art, sat down on a chair in her new room with a balcony and made a wish, to stay in one home for a long time. To Katia, the move across the river meant she would not have to commute three hours a day to her art college; instead, she would spend more time with her friends and attend galleries in the city center, on days when there are no air alarms. “Moving means a new beginning, a hope,” Katia said. 

Millions of Ukrainians are on the move. The war drove a wave of about 5.7 million Ukrainians into Europe and another about as many people were displaced internally within the country. One in four Ukrainian children are now not sleeping in the homes where they lived when the war began. Moving is hard, especially for children. “We get used to one place and then we have to move and we get used to a new place, again and again,” Katia’s sister, Yulia, said. She did not share Katia’s excitement. Twelve-year-old Yulia in fact lives in one place: in the Roblox video game.

The virtual world and virtual friends had been her shelter since their mother was killed in spring of 2022. No amount of cajoling from her aunt or grandmother helped unglue Yulia from the screen. She grew her bangs long, to cover her face like a shield, and holds her iPad and the Roblox world under her hair, not talking to anyone around. Finally, when it was time to go, Yulia quickly packed her stuff without much interest. 

Hours later, Katia found her sister in bed in their new home, playing Roblox, again.  On Thursday night, Russian forces launched more air strikes on Kyiv, damaging the energy system. The Iorgu sister’s new home had no electricity all day on Friday. “Yulia’s dream is to have a dog and cuddle with it at home,” Katia said. “But for now, the happiest time she has is under a blanket with an iPad in her hands.” 

Often, Yulia comes to Katia when she has a bad dream or on the nights of bombardment of Kyiv. Yulia spends her days at home most of the time, without friends: she is among 1.2 million children - every third Ukrainian child - who study online. Keeping children indoors is a matter of survival for families in eastern, southern and northern regions. Ukraine is working on solving the issue of security for children and allowing socialization: there are 33 newly built, underground schools in cities close to the frontline. Of course, Yulia’s interest in Roblox is not unique. Video game use and abuse is high during the war. About 60 percent of Ukrainian children play video games every day.

And with no parents, who is there to watch their screen time? Yulia and Katia are among more than 17,000 of Ukraine’s children orphaned by the war. 

The details of their tragedy fade away. Adults try not to remind them of their loss. Just a few things remain in their memory of a vivid, terrifying day, April 8 2022. Their young and pretty mother, Marina Lyalko, dressed happily in her yellow jacket and skinny jeans, was standing before them holding a paper cup with tea on the train station platform in the eastern town of Kramatorsk. She smiled and said encouraging words about their first move, about the importance of evacuating from the war zone and the happy life ahead, in a safe place. 

A moment later, Katia was on the ground with dozens of other people. She was crawling, screaming in pain, calling for her mom to help her. But there was no answer. Weeks later, Human Rights Watch described the tragedy as a “Russian cluster munition attack,” with a missile that dispersed dozens of small bomblets on the crowd of evacuating families at the train station, killing 58 civilians. Hundreds of people, including Katia, Yulia and their mother, were waiting for a train to escape the war-torn Donbas. Lyalko’s plan to save her daughters was smart. Today, almost four years later, residents in their hometown of Druzhkivka live without electricity under constant bombardment, less than 10 miles from the front line.

Katia survived thanks to a big, heavy man standing nearby, whose body blocked shrapnel. But her legs were full of small pieces of metal.  She was so hurt and shocked, she could not talk or walk. “When I first saw Katia at the Okhmatdyt hospital, she did not speak at all. I thought she was not developing; but psychologists explained to me that it was the result of her shock, after witnessing her mother’s death,” said Natalia Zabolotna, an art gallerist who helped to find and rent a new home for Katia and Yulia this week. 

During her time at the hospital, Katia rolled around the long corridors in her wheelchair. “It was so terribly sad at the hospital, but then I began to paint and make little presents for people I met,” Katia remembers. She loved colors. Her gifts for her doctors and nurses were hand-beaded bracelets. When she finally recovered from shock and began to talk, Katia said that her dream was to live at the hospital, a place full of friendly medical personnel and jolly volunteers. 

It was her first community after losing her mother. It was a place where she began to paint. But she could not stay. As soon as she moved across the river to her new home, Katia ran out the door and took the subway back to the Okhmatdyt hospital, which she visits often: “A clown from Germany performed for us last night, we were a few dozen children watching the performance,” she said. That day, the hospital admitted a wounded pregnant mother with her 8-year-old son who lost his leg in the bombing of Kyiv the night before.  

On Saturday, Katia’s physical therapist, Doctor Valentina Lutsenko, found a way to get Yulia out of the house. “Next week she starts aikido classes,” Lutsenko said. “It’s better than nothing. As many kids who lost their mothers, Katia and Yulia often feel abandoned by society. Their home in Druzhkivka has been destroyed. They think they have nothing left of their own,” doctor Lutsenko said in an interview on Saturday. 

Back in her new house, Katia was painting with water colors at a desk facing the balcony and autumn trees outside, in her own room. One of her recent, blue and yellow paintings depicted Kyiv’s skyline along the Dnipro river. When the night falls, Katia is ready to comfort Yulia, whenever her little sister is having a nightmare. She reassures them both of better, happier times ahead. “That’s what our mom would have done,” she said. 

Alina

Ukraine’s largest children's hospital, Okhmatdyt, was badly damaged by a Russian missile on July 8, 2024. Doctors had to evacuate more than 500 child patients. About a dozen children were wounded in that attack and two adults were killed. But in less than two months, Ukraine repaired the country’s main children’s hospital, and it continues to admit and treat children. 

This year it is full again. Seventeen-year-old Alina Skytsko has been undergoing surgeries here since November last year. Alina, a delicate teen with a mop of hair that she’s recently died purple, shares her ward with two more patients. Her bed is the closest to the door. But Alina cannot get up and walk out -- her legs are too badly wounded.

Months pass by but Alina’s mind is still struggling to process what happened during the Russian artillery attack on the southern city of Kherson: her home was hit, her mother was killed on a November morning.  

“She cries each time she recalls her mother,” Alina’s father, Volodymyr Skytsko, told us in a recent interview. “It feels like her mother has just gone on a trip. It’s hard to believe she died.” 

On the day of the attack, Alina and her family were celebrating her grandmother's birthday in the village of Zelenivka, in the outskirts of Kherson. Russian forces shelled the area early in the morning. A heavy artillery, 152 mm shell landed outside their house. Alina's mother, Olena, was killed instantly; pieces of shrapnel wounded Alina in her legs and her arm.

“Mom, mom!” Alina screamed. But all she could hear was a scary, rattling noise. More explosions could be heard. Alina put her arm around her mother, trying to protect her, hoping for her mother’s survival. Minutes later policemen arrived and one of them said, “The woman is finished.”

The ambulance couldn’t reach the house for some time due to Russian surveillance drones in the sky, and a risk of a repeat attack. Alina passed out from blood loss before reaching the hospital. She spent a week in intensive care in Kherson then was transferred to Kyiv’s Ohmatdyt children’s hospital, where she was undergoing surgery after surgery.

A torn muscle. A fractured leg. Nerve damage. Alina’s right arm and leg remain in casts. Her shoulder may require surgery. She weighs just 88 pounds. She can’t move on her own. “I carry her in my arms to the toilet,” her father said. “There is no one else to help.”

Volodymyr feeds Alina, lifts her into a wheelchair, carries her to the bathroom, helps her to dress up. He hasn’t left her in months. He is at risk himself: his name is on the wanted list at the draft office. Busy with his wounded daughter, he neither had time to register as Alina’s sole guardian nor to confirm her disability status, needed for a draft exemption.  

Alina and her father have almost no income at the moment. Their situation is not unique. “Unfortunately, the state does not do enough for orphans and children deprived of parental care,” said Daria Kasianova, Chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Network for Children's Rights. “Despite certain steps in reforming the system, it still remains predominantly institutional,” meaning orphans are expected to enter institutions rather than the state providing help to surviving family members.

For now, all that Alina gets is $150 a month in state aid for an internally displaced person. To get removed from the list of potential conscripts, Volodymyr would have to show up at the draft office and pay a fine of 17,000 Ukrainian hryvnia, or $472, which he does not have. “I’m not hiding from the military,” he says. “I’m just here with my daughter. But if I leave to do the paperwork, I leave her completely alone.”

Volodymyr has no family who could take shifts to substitute him at the hospital. For now, he survives on small donations and his grandmother’s pension, as he cannot leave his daughter alone to work full time. 

Alina hasn’t thought about the future much. There is only one thing she firmly knows: “I am a music lover. I prefer rap or heavy metal music,” she says, and smiles. Music makes her happy. 

 It’s a long road to recovery and rehabilitation for Alina. Her father hopes they can return to their home region in southern Ukraine, maybe to the city of Mykolaiv near Kherson. Then he could visit his wife’s grave and rebuild what’s left of their life. But that city, too, is under Russian missile and drone attack.

Alina has a friend at the hospital, another wounded girl. Her father wheels her to the lower floor of the hospital for visits with her friend. The girls chat, listen to music, do the kinds of things that teenagers everywhere like to do. These small trips by the elevator to visit her friend are Alina’s first steps in her life without her mother.

Ilya

Ilya Matviyenko witnessed one of the worst battles of this war, the battle for the city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea in southeastern Ukraine. He was only 10 when his mother, Natalia, was mortally wounded in the shelling of their neigborhood on March 20, 2022. “We were walking across our courtyard, when a missile blew up nearby. We were both badly wounded,” Ilya said. He has told many people about his tragedy. “I shared my story with the International Criminal Court, with officials in the White House, with Swedish royalty. I believe that many more people should know what happened to us.” 

His bleeding mother managed to pull Ilya inside a friend’s house. There was no hospital nearby, no doctor to ask for help. The boy was holding his wounded mother, listening to her hoarse breathing, watching her bleed. Natalia died in his arms that very night. She was buried in the yard of their house the next morning. In July 2022, her body was moved from Mariupol under a number, no name, and reburied without a grave stone.

Ilya was wounded in his hip and legs. The Russian military found him and brought him across the front line, to the Russia-annexed Donetsk, to a local hospital, where he stayed for almost a month alone, with an unknown future. His heroic grandmother, Olena, traveled through four countries to reach Russia to bring Ilya back to Ukraine. She was able to carry him out of the Donetsk hospital in her arms, as he was extremely thin and fragile. 

Weeks later, President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Ilya in the Okhmatdyt hospital to present the boy with an iPad. Ilya’s case became high profile, since he was among the first Ukrainian children to be returned from the occupied territories after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “Authorities asked us if my grandson was ready to share his story with the International Criminal Court; we believe that to see justice, we should talk,” Olena said in a recent interview. 

Cheerful and a joker, Ilya calls his new role “diplomatic.” He and his grandmother traveled to the United States and around Europe. When we met Ilya and his grandmother in western Ukraine last week, they were preparing for one more trip to the United States. Ilya’s new home is far away from Mariupol and frontlines now, in the city of Uzhhorod, on the border with Hungary. He can go to school offline and socializes with children of his age. His new hometown is one of the few places in Ukraine where children can feel safe.

We met at a local café, Sitting next to his grandmother. Ilya was cracking jokes, telling us about his life. When his grandmother spoke, he did not interrupt. And he tried to sooth her when she spoke about her late daughter. 

The war, his loss and his wounds made him seem old beyond his years. Now13-year-old Ilya has new friends in Uzhhorod. They play in the courtyard. Ilya likes soccer. “My friend Eldar already has a mustache,” he said. “I'm already taller than my grandmother, I’m 5 feet tall,” he said.

We ask him what he has been doing lately. "My grandmother and I were in Sweden for two weeks for rehabilitation. We visited museums and even met the queen and princess,” said Ilya. “I was in Berlin too", he said. Of the German officials he met, he said, “they're all pretty serious guys there.”

Ilya was one of the Ukrainian orphans testifying in the international court of justice in Hague, telling the world about atrocities happening in Ukraine. Ilya talks always about the war in Ukraine, a now experienced ambassador for Ukrainian children wounded and orphaned by the Russian war. Olena, his grandmother, shared that even in the White House, he told everyone, “Give us weapons.”

Ilya said he must do his diplomatic work. “It's a major mission but I'm not getting carried away,” the boy said. “I'm just doing what needs to be done. I think it's important to share this. Otherwise, they'll just be skeptical.”

Ilya said all the prime ministers he met are pretty much the same. But like a real, professional diplomat, he doesn’t offend anyone, and he is patriotic. His favorite meeting was with Ukrainian President Zelensky and First lady Olena Zelenska, he said. “Thanks to Olena Zelenska, we got an apartment, and Volodymyr Zelensky gave me an iPad. I was blown away when I saw it. That was when I was in the Okhmatdyt hospital,” Ilya said.

An event awaits that will require diplomatic skills from Ilya and his grandmother. They are preparing their latest mission, to go to the United States to meet President Trump.

“I'm really looking forward to meeting Trump,” Ilya said. “Remember when he promised to end the war as quickly as possible? Jumping to conclusions is a very bad habit. You shouldn't do that. Otherwise, you'll blurt something out, and then you'll be in big trouble,” Ilya said.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.