Oleksandr, known as Sasha, did not have the life of an ordinary 18-year-old. His mother, Sveta, was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when Sasha was three. Sasha had spent his life caring for her, helping her get dressed, wash and go to the bathroom. Sasha had a natural love for learning, according to his family. Ever since he started talking, he has enjoyed reciting poetry. At the age of seven he asked if he could learn to play the piano. Despite graduating from music school with honors, he decided to study medicine. He achieved full marks in the Ukrainian national high school exams in chemistry and biology and received a scholarship to the best medical school in Ukraine, in Kyiv. Another leading university, Taras Shevchenko University, also in Kyiv, called his mother to complain when they heard he would not come to them. Sasha was planning to become a neurosurgeon to help treat his mother’s illness, his family said. The shelves in Sasha’s bedroom in Kyiv are full of thick textbooks and encyclopedias. He requested two books for his birthday last year, Robert Brooker’s Genetics: Analysis and Principles and the British Medical Association’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary. His mother ordered them from abroad. “He did not drink, did not smoke or go out at night. “He was a completely homely child, a peaceful boy,” said Sveta, sitting in her wheelchair in Sasha’s bedroom. “He knew I needed help and he always ran home after school to help me. When I was depressed or depressed due to my illness he would take me and even give me a massage. “There are children who like football or wrestling. My child loved books, chess and piano, but no one ever forced him to study. But do not think that he was stuck. He planted potatoes with his grandmother, made the roof with his grandfather and changed his cousin’s diapers. “He was a simple, simple boy.” Sasha’s favorite movies were the Hobbit trilogy and Bridget Jones, his mother said. Sasha, 18, who was killed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, plays the piano – video When Christmas was celebrated at Sasha’s grandparents’s home in Hostomel last year, the Ivanov family could not imagine what 2022 would bring. In a video recorded by his mother in her wheelchair on December 23, Sasha helped his four-year-old cousin putting ornaments on the tree at his grandparents’s house. Less than a month later, in January, Valery, Sasha’s grandfather, suffered a stroke and was taken to hospital. The left side of his body was paralyzed. When Russia invaded on February 24, the hospital asked Valery’s wife, Lilia, Sasha’s grandmother, to pick him up. Despite her children’s advice to bring him to Kyiv, she asked the ambulance to take him to their home in Hostomel, where there is also a cargo airport that has been the site of many major attacks by Russian forces. “I thought it would be safer there,” Lilia said. “How did I know?” As the fighting raged on the day of the invasion, Lilia decided to move to Sveta’s apartment in Kyiv. But she needed help: her husband weighs 18 stones. Lilia, 60, could not pick him up alone in the car. He drove to Kyiv early on the second day of the invasion to pick up Sasha. As they drove behind Hostomel together, Russian snipers shot their car from a children’s park. Lilia and other people interviewed by the Guardian at Hostomel say Ukrainian troops were not in the city at the time and had seen a Russian column. “It was like an explosion in the car. I saw that Sasha’s head had fallen, thus, to one side. Then I turned black. “When I met him and saw him, I just screamed, I did not know what to do,” said Lilia. “I tried to lift his head, but my hand was a floppy disk. I pressed the pedal and we left. “They were shooting at us again and again and I felt like I was losing consciousness again.” Lilia managed to drive another two miles before fainting on the steering wheel from shrapnel wounds. A boy took to the streets and called an ambulance to take her to the nearest hospital in Bucha – the town near Hostomel, which is now notorious for massacring civilians in Russia. Nothing could be done about Sasha. At the hospital, Lilia regained consciousness and called Sveta. He told her that Sasha was dead and his body was in the car at Hostomel. But the ordeal for Sasha’s family did not end there. His grandmother was now injured in a hospital in Bucha and his paralyzed grandfather was alone at his grandparents’ house in Hostomel. Both sides were under Russian occupation. “I had to make a choice,” Sveta said in tears. “Pick up my parents or pick up my son’s body.” She chose her son. “We were told they were blowing up the bridges and we had to do it now,” he said. Sveta and Sasha’s father drove to Hostomel surrounded by the roar of shells. They found their son’s body in the passenger seat of the car. Eduard Lysovyk, who was later also shot by a Russian sniper, came to the rescue. The three of them put Sasha’s body in the family car. They went to the police station to report the death, but the police did not come out because the bombing was very heavy. They had to try two morgues because the first one did not accept the body without a police report. The next day, Sasha was buried in Bouha’s cemetery. There were no cemetery workers. Sasha’s father, Lysovyk, and the head of the cemetery dug the hole themselves. Sveta, who can stand and walk for short periods, broke her leg while mourning over his open coffin. “I put his Tom Ford glasses in the coffin, along with his scrubs,” Sveta said. Sasha and a friend before the high school graduation party in the summer of 2021. Photo: Provided For 20 days, Lilia remained in the three-story hospital in Bucha with terrified patients and doctors. When the bombing was bad, they moved to the corridors where they lay on the floor. There was no running water, heating or electricity. “We just ate frozen pasta that was cooked on the fire outside,” Lilia said. “We had to get water from a well outside.” Finally a generator was found. Despite having multiple shrapnel wounds and a paralyzed arm, Lilia was one of the healthiest patients and thus offered to help carry the generator up the stairs. “The Russians came in once and asked if any of us were Russian citizens or if any of us were Ukrainian soldiers. “We all said no,” said Lilia. At one point she wanted to leave on foot to go to her husband who was still at their family home, but the doctors said she would not be able to do so as she was very weak. Three weeks later, an evacuation bus arrived. “Our bus and 60 others entered Kyiv, but the Russians stopped us on the Zhytomyrska highway and started firing at us. We were stuck on the buses for two and a half hours and jets were flying over our heads. “Then they let us go,” said Lilia. Valery, Sasha’s grandfather, was transferred from his home in Hostomel to the family apartment in Kyiv on April 9. He had spent 44 days alone, half paralyzed, in the basement. A neighbor had dared to visit him once a day to feed him and help him go to the toilet. “I just wanted him to stop,” said Valerie, who sat down on the couch in Kiev’s apartment, clenching his fists and crying. Lilia tried to calm him down. “You are no longer there Valia, it does not matter.” Sveta said: “There are some families that have not been affected by the war. But the war affected our family more than anything else. “My mother is disabled, my father is disabled, I am disabled and I buried my son.”
