In the Shevchenko family home, a grim nighttime routine has emerged. The whirr of the air raid siren sends the youngest of the nine foster children to their adopted parents’ bedroom. Alina, 3, hides under the blanket. Ivan, 2, sobs. Anatoly, 10, sits alone.
Mishka, 16, checks the online chat groups to see whether it’s Shahed attack drones, ballistic missiles or artillery attacks flying overhead. Vika, 18, reads fairytales to the children who can’t sleep. Sometimes, her voice falters when her thoughts drift to her older brother, who was sent to the front line last year. He’s been missing for seven months.
Artem, 11, Zhenya, 10 and Maria, 7, find it particularly difficult to talk because of the trauma from four years of war in Ukraine. After the siblings were abandoned at the start of the war, cockroaches burrowed into their ears and died there. They had lost most of their hearing by the time a doctor at a hospital in the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi discovered the cause. He hadn’t seen a case like it in more than 30 years.
... read the full article here: The Telegraph
