With its trail of destruction and suffering, the Russian invasion has impacted children’s play and the way children cope in Ukraine under almost daily bombings.
“I really like going to war. I want to grow up to be a real war hero,” says Maksim Mudrak, a 10-year-old boy in a child’s uniform, a helmet too big for his head, and a plastic gun.
Maksim’s father, Oleksii Mudrak, who was not a soldier, was killed near Kiev at the start of the Russian invasion, the day he left to deliver supplies to volunteers, the family says.
The boy’s grandmother says that since the beginning of the invasion and since the death of his father on March 4, 2022, Maksim has become increasingly interested in war.
“He was very upset about his father’s death. Maksim thinks about him all the time. He goes to the cemetery and starts crying,” says his grandmother, Valentina, aged 72.
For Maksim, becoming a soldier is a way to preserve the memory of his father, and he has a very clear idea of who the culprits were. “I see Russians as my worst enemies,” he says, who lives with his grandmother near Kiev, in Stoyanka, and maintains contact with his mother.
Russians “are bad”
For many Ukrainian children, the war meant the loss of loved ones, being cut off from schools or their homes and exposed to all kinds of horrors. According to UN data, more than 500 children have died since the invasion began.
Psychologist Katerina Goltsberg explains that children have always played war games in conflict situations and that this resource is a way to process their experiences.
While all Ukrainian children have been affected by war to a greater or lesser extent, it remains to be seen to what extent these experiences will lead to lifelong trauma.
Lesia Shevchenko says her 8-year-old daughter Dana only asked one thing when meeting other children: “What’s your name? Let’s play!” But during a family trip to Bulgaria, after the invasion of Ukraine began, Shevchenko noticed that her daughter started with another question: her country of origin. In the case of the Russian children, Dana turned and silently walked away.
“I don’t feel like talking to them, that’s all. Probably because I think all Russians are mean to me,” Dana explains.
The mother, a 49-year-old dentist, guarantees that it was not she who transferred this behavior to her and, on the contrary, it makes her realize that it is not possible to hate arbitrarily. But Dana was traumatized by war and bombing, which made her very afraid of noise.
“I Want Revenge”
Other Ukrainian parents, however, see it as their duty to instill in their children a view of Russia that leaves no room for doubt. Iryna Kovalenko has taught her children since the invasion that the Russians are collectively responsible for war and that those who are good must prove it.
Her six-year-old daughter Sofiya announces: “My mother told me they drop bombs from Russia in Ukraine.” “The mother also said that (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is very mean. And that he beat dogs and cats when he was a child. When he grew up, he turned to people,” he adds.
Kovalenko, a 33-year-old nurse, takes her words as a warning to her children. “Somehow they have to know who they are dealing with. Ukraine will always have a border – Russia will always be our neighbor.”
One of the other boys who plays war with Maksym, the child whose father was killed in the first weeks of the war, took this message one step further.
“I want to somehow take revenge on the soldiers who died at the front,” says 13-year-old Andriy Shyrokyh, who wears a homemade war uniform and bulletproof vest.
Andriy dreams of becoming a soldier and says he has no interest in going to school – except to learn military tactics. “I want to do to the Russians what they did to us,” says
Source: DN
