He anxiously paces the yard of his home, pointing to the newly formed scars and constellation of shrapnel scars from the bombing just a few days earlier. “Everything was in one second. Everything started to fall apart,” Serhiy told CBC News days after his son’s death, through a translator, with more shelling in the distance. It was 11 a.m. on September 3, and some of Serhiy’s five children were playing in the yard of their small house in Vysunsk, a village in the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine. Then the bombings started. Everyone scattered and three of the children ran into the hallway of the house with his wife, Olha Dyriy. Eight-year-old Oleksandr, pictured in his kindergarten photo, died on September 3 in a bombing in the Ukrainian city of Vysunsk. Oleksander, whose family called him Sasha, died the same week Save the Children reported a grim statistic: 1,000 children have been killed or injured in the last six months of the war in Ukraine. (Melissa Mancini/CBC)
“Everything was quiet”
But Oleksandr, or Sasha as he was called, hid in the garage. When the confusion and strong attack was over, Serhiy and Olha went to look for him. “We were calling him, but everything was quiet,” Olha said, her voice shaking, “I couldn’t see Sasha.” He was found lying on his stomach next to a motorcycle, with serious shrapnel wounds to the head. Serhi picked him up and put him on a chair. They called an ambulance, but he was already gone. “There was nothing inside his head,” his father says, describing the severity of his son’s injuries. “I wish he would take me, not my child.” Olha Dyriy holds her son, Artem, while her daughter, Sofi, stands nearby. Olha said that after the bombing, they found Sasha dead on the ground in the garage where he ran for cover. (Melissa Mancini/CBC)
A grim statistic
Sasha’s gruesome, tragic death was reported the same way many are now in Ukraine. A message on the social networking app Telegram on September 3 read: “As a result of the shelling in Mykolaiv and Oblast [region]6 people were injured… A child was killed.” He died in the same week that Save the Children reported a grim statistic: 1,000 children have been killed or injured in the last six months of the war in Ukraine. That’s an average of five a day, according to an analysis the agency did with verified UN data. As the war in Ukraine enters its seventh month amid shifting front lines, airstrikes and artillery continue to kill and maim civilians, including children who have no stake in this war and are powerless to escape. Sasha liked cars and was a very good boy, his father said. He helped with his younger siblings and was supposed to start third grade last week. Now his grave is a few meters away from where he went to kindergarten, a short bike ride from Olha and Serhiy’s house. Sasha’s father, Serhiy Hulevich, left, stands with his eldest son, Vladislav, at Sasha’s grave in Vysunsk, a village in southern Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region. (Susan Ormiston/CBC)
Life near the front line
The family lives about 80 kilometers from occupied Kherson and less than 20 kilometers from the southern war front. The population of the small village was less than 2,200 before the war began. The family’s modest home and shed were hit several times in the attack, and the shelling destroyed the roof of the building they used to store wood for the winter. A hand-sized crater in the stone courtyard marks where the bullet that killed Sasha landed. “See what the shrapnel did? Serhiy asked. “See there, here? Everything was flying and everything happened in a second.” As his daughter, Sofi, watches, Serhiy holds a case found near their home after the Sept. 3 attack that killed his son. (Susan Ormiston/CBC) On the same day there were also strikes at Serhiy’s neighbor’s house, where more children were playing outside. His neighbor’s child was taken to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Odessa, he said. “They are very, very cruel people,” Serhiy said of the Russians he said hit his village. “Why would they punish a child? He hasn’t had a chance to see the world.” The sounds of shelling have been heard more frequently in recent weeks, according to Serhiy, who noted that loud bangs wake him up early in the morning, at 2am. “Very huge explosions,” he said. “When people are fast asleep.” WATCHES | Those who stayed in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, are scared but hopeful:
Months of surviving shelling in Mykolaiv, Ukraine
Frequent shelling has driven out much of the population of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, a city on the country’s southern coast. Those who remain survive with the help of foreign aid. They say they are scared, but hopeful. The family had stayed because Olha’s mother, who has disabilities, could not easily make the journey somewhere safer. But now, they plan to go to Western Ukraine to stay with Serhiy’s sister and father. “I intend to move away from here because there will be no more life in this area,” he said. Once they fill out the paperwork to certify Sasha’s death, he says they’ll go. “I don’t want to lose all my children.”
