An Ukrainian mother who wrote contact details with her pen on the back of her two-year-old daughter while fleeing Ukraine described her despair at the time to the BBC.
Sasha Makovii said she wrote the name of little Vira, her age and some phone numbers, right on the girl’s back, in case the family was separated or killed while fleeing Kyiv. “If we had been killed and she was found, they would have known who she was,” Sasha Makovii told the BBC.
The family is now in France, where it feels “surrounded by love and care.”
Upon arrival, Sasha posted on Instagram a photo of the writing on Vira’s back, and the image went viral. “It was the first day of the war and we were preparing to flee Kyiv, and we just didn’t know what it would be,” Sasha told BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight.
Packing a few things in the deafening sound of bombs, Sasha said she was “not sure if we could get out of the house if we were hit by rockets.”
“It was my biggest fear that Vira would be lost or that we would die and she would never know who she was or what family she came from,” said Sasha.
Worried that her daughter might be left orphan, Sasha Makovii hoped that Vira could at least have her social media accounts to see what she looked like. “I thought they could find some information on the internet, find my Instagram account and be able to see their parents,” she said.
Arriving in France, after a long journey through Moldova, Romania and Belgium, Sasha Makovii says that she is “shaken” mentally. The war is so traumatic, she says, that going out is scary for her too, because she sees an anti-landmine in every stone.
“Vira is OK. She’s too young to understand what’s going on. She may feel my tension, but she’s too small to understand. I’m very happy she’s small. She is very happy “, the woman added.