in the crowded orphanages of Lviv, a thousand children traumatized by the bombings

The walls are filled with brightly colored designs. In the middle of the room, the smallest of the children are harnessed to a puzzle. In this orphanage in the Lviv region, in western Ukraine, 47 children are currently being cared for. This is double from a month ago.

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In the country, orphanages are overflowing. After more than 70 days of war12 million people have been displaced, either abroad or within their own country, sometimes left without families.

The region of Lviv, relatively isolated from the war, currently hosts a thousand single children, distributed among 25 orphanages. Svitlana, the director of the establishment, points to a little girl from her orphanage:

“Here we have little Eva, she is five years old. She already had no dad and her mother died in a bombing in the east of the country.”

Like Eva, many children welcomed here have lived through the hell of the bombardments. A glimmer of hope for her, however: her 17-year-old brother has been located in another region of the country and the steps are underway so that he can find his little sister.

The vast majority of the thousand children welcomed in orphanages in the region come from the east of the country. “These are children who had the opportunity to experience the bombardments, in Kharkiv or in Kherson“, explains the regional manager of the establishments, Volodymyr Lys.

He notes that the war “changed the mentality of children“. For example, many young Russian speakers start speaking in Ukrainian. Little boys even sing a patriotic song in a hallway.

“The kids ask me if we’re going home one day.”

Marine, a guide

franceinfo

Marina accompanied some of these children from Donbass, in the east: “I tell them that we will meet one day, that’s for sure. The only thing is that we hope that when we go back east, we will still be in Ukraine and not in Russia.”