Four months ago, they were preparing for the birth of their first child. Currently, they are sitting in a hostel that has turned into an unpretentious apartment in the center of St. Petersburg, Russia. They became refugees. They escaped from Mariupol, the port city of the Black Sea, now under Russian control, but were permanently injured.
“We were planning a lot for the future. We were renovating our apartment,” said Shishkina, 30,. Now they don’t want to go back again.
“Purely emotionally, we always knew where we were back, and we were always …” Her voice was dragged out and her husband, Vladimir Shishikin, finished the sentence. .. “We will always be afraid,” he said.
CNN met a Ukrainian couple who married in Russia’s second largest city and Rev. Grigory Miknov-Weitenko, a Russian priest. Mikhnov-Vaytenko estimates that he and his network of volunteers have helped thousands of Ukrainian refugees since the conflict began.
When the Russian army entered Ukraine, Shishkina was resting at a maternity hospital in Mariupol, but her longing baby grew up in her. She told CNN that her previous pregnancy was lost in 21 weeks and it was difficult for her and her husband to become pregnant again. She remembers being in a quiet ward full of women whose deadlines were approaching when the deadly bomb struck the hospital.
“It was so powerful that your ears rang and drowned everything else,” Shishkina said. “Everything was collapsing out of nowhere.”
On March 9, Mariupol’s Third Maternity Hospital was bombed, killing four people and injuring more in the infamous incident. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian troops of dropping bombs from the air. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that the bombed hospital was being used by Ukrainian troops and that all patients and nurses had left. A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry denied at the briefing that Russia had bombarded the maternity hospital, calling it a “provocation.”
Everything has changed for Shishkina, who was involved in a violent and brutal conflict.
She said she knew she needed to scream in order to be found in the wreckage and hope to be rescued. Shishkina was scooped out from under the rubble and rushed to another hospital where doctors could save her life. But not that of her fetus.
“They had a Caesarean section. Panics happened everywhere, but they said they had to save me. They saw the child run out of vital signs. They pulled him out. I tried to revive it, “said Shishkina.
“Whoever caused the explosion, I hit my belly directly-directly to my baby-and they couldn’t save him,” she told CNN.
When she was healthy, she tried to send a message to her family, but she didn’t know if they were still in Mariupol or even alive.
She heard that some of her relatives had left. But her husband, Vladimir Shishikin, wasn’t with them.
He was injured the day after the hospital bombing and was being treated in Donetsk about 70 miles (112 km) away. Located in the easternmost part of Ukraine, the city has been run by Russian-backed separatists since 2014, with one Russian president, Vladimir Puttin, becoming independent in the days before the conflict. I admitted.
31-year-old Shishkin told CNN that when he and a friend named Tolik were involved in an airstrike, he went to the only local store before going to see his injured wife.
“I ran when I heard the plane grow,” he said, with crutches supported next to him. “There was a fence and a hill with a big house. Like everyone around us, we jumped over the fence. I shouted,” Trik, Trik, “but he was already dead. He couldn’t say anything. ”
Shishkin said he heard his cry for help from a stranger and took him to the road in a wheelbarrow and then to the hospital in a car. His condition worsened and he was transferred to another hospital in the Donetsk region, where his leg was amputated.
When he saw Shishkina posting a message for help, he contacted the couple on social media. He arranged for them to travel to St. Petersburg and paid for shelter, medical care, and their needs.
Mikhnov-Vaytenko has often had a network of thousands of Ukrainian refugees with him and his volunteers since the beginning of the conflict, from refugee travel and housing payments to information on medical care and destinations and rights in Russia. It is estimated that they have supported. With gentle words and prayers.
“All we can do is take a moment, look at our eyes, smile and say,’Everything is okay, now you’re saved,'” the priest told CNN. Church: One bare room in a former factory in St. Petersburg. “Then, with the help of God, I hope it will be in the past from some time.”
Ukrainians arriving in Russia have a residence in a refugee center and are allowed to stay for 10,000 rubles (about US $ 175) for one year.
Most Ukrainians, especially those from the east and fluent in Russian, say it’s a fairly easy transition. He says many refugees do not want to go to Europe at first. I’m afraid they can’t speak different languages.
Mikhnov-Vaytenko relies on donations to help pay for work with refugees, including moving many to the EU. He said the money came from Russian hospitals, businesses, businessmen, and the general public.
Mikhnov-Vaytenko shares the limits of support available in Russia and has no worries about helping Ukrainians move forward if they so desire.
“People who come to Russia have no information. What they can do, where they can go, what they are allowed to do,” he told CNN.
And so far, he hasn’t faced any formal obstruction to his work. “I haven’t seen them, and they haven’t seen me,” he says of the Russian authorities.
Mikhnov-Vaytenko left the Russian Orthodox Church in 2014 after a deadly battle in eastern Ukraine and the support that both the Church and Moscow gave to pro-Russian separatists there.
Bishop Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is a strong ally of Putin and supports what the Russian government calls “special military operations” in Ukraine.
“Currently, it is essentially a Russian military church. We do not have Orthodox Christians. We have military Christians,” said Miknov Weitenko.
Even with the enforcement of strict new legislation, Miknov Weitenko bravely says he is not afraid to speak openly about opposition to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. He only fears God.
“I was born and raised in a dissident family, so I have nothing to fear,” he said.
As for the young couple, Miknov Weitenko noticed that they had the opportunity to secure a ticket and accommodation to Germany and start a new life. Shishkin will also be worn on the prosthesis of a specialized hospital in Bavaria.
While Mikhnov-Vaytenko was loading the couple’s luggage into the car, Shishkina said they were nervous but excited. Already she looks lighter and happier.
“Fear? Maybe fear of the unknown … but our expectations are positive and we know that everything will be better,” she said.
Source: www.cnn.com
