Mark, this two-year-old Ukrainian baby who has only known war

Yulia’s son was born on February 28, 2022 in kyiv, four days after the Russian invasion. Her mother decided to move back in with her parents to be safer, but the family plans to one day leave Ukraine for good.

Being born into war, having only known that. Ukrainian children born around February 24, 2022 are two years old today. Like Mark, this little boy whose mother we had already met Yulia, in kyiv. She now lives an hour and a half from the capital. “This is my parents’ house. I spent my childhood here,” she says.

Coming back to live there, with her dad, in the countryside, became obvious last spring for Yulia and her family, after too many scares in kyiv. “Pieces of missiles are falling everywhere. At night, when we left kyiv, a piece of missile fell 400 meters from our house. I couldn’t take it anymore!” Yulia feels safe here “because it’s a useless city, there is no strategic road, there is nothing, it’s in the middle of nowhere. I like it a lot. When I was young it was bad [horrible], but now it’s paradise.”

“Russia is cancer”

Hunched over a large geography book, his little boy, Mark, will be 2 years old on February 28. “He doesn’t know normal life. His whole life, these two years, he spent at war.” Yulia decided to speak to her boy in Ukrainian.

“Russian is a useless language. He can speak English, French, Chinese, if he wants. I don’t want him to speak Russian at all!”

Yulia, mother of little Mark

on franceinfo

Two years of war and, today more than ever, Yulia fears that her husband will be mobilized to the front. “It scares me, but what can we do? If we don’t stop the Russians, we’re going to die, she says. This is existential war. It’s either us or them. It’s our fault, we Ukrainians. We wanted to be friends with the crocodile. Is it possible ? Yes, for five days, but on the sixth day he will eat you. Russia is cancer. I don’t see the solution, it doesn’t exist. We’re still going to go to war.”

A possible exile in Canada

Does she imagine her little boy being a soldier one day? “Yes, I imagine Mark fighting for the independence of Ukraine. Children who were, for example, 7 years old in 2014, when Russia began its invasion, they are in war today. And it’s very sad !”

From all this, today, Yulia protects her little boy who gets impatient, then calms down to music. One day, perhaps, she says, her family will leave Ukraine to offer Mark another life, why not in Canada. “I want my son to have a passport from a country that has no neighbors or just one. That way, if we have any problems, we only have one with one neighbor. I would have preferred it. Australia, but my husband is afraid of spiders”, she regrets. “I want my son to have this possibility of not living with Russians.” And while waiting for that day, this child of war listens tirelessly, on his grandfather’s knees, to Ukrainian folklore.