Listen to the Audio:
I want to talk about what happens to childhood when home is no longer safe and leaving it does not always mean safety.
I’m now living and working in Sumy, a city in [northeast] Ukraine, close to the Russian border and not far from the front line. During one week of reporting, Russian attacks on energy infrastructure left us several times without electricity, mobile connection or internet. First, for almost three days, then again for another day. In a heat wave, this meant walking through the city in 35-degree (95 F) heat, looking for any working socket to charge a laptop, send email, upload photos or simply keep writing. Eventually, I found a café with [a] powerful generator, sat down and finished my text.
But the next evening, when many families with children had gone outside after the heat of the day, Russian forces dropped a guided aerial bomb on one of the central streets of Sumy. Later, I interviewed a spokesperson for the state emergency service. He told me that even rescuers and medics who have seen so much during four-and-a-half years of war could not hold back tears that night as they saw adults and children with devastating injuries caused by the blast. Five people were killed. More than 30 were wounded. The whole city was in shock.
Five days later, Russian forces dropped another guided aerial bomb on a public transport stop in another part of the city. Six people were killed, including a 13-year-old girl.
For years, people in Sumy have lived under constant Russian attacks and tried to hold themselves together. But after these strikes, something changed. Fear became more visible. Calls to evacuate children from the city grew louder. The old discussion whether to stay or leave returned with a new force. That is why I decided to rewrite this audio blog around one painful question: What does it really mean to take a child away from war? It may save them from shelling, drones and missiles, but it also means taking them away from home, from their cities, schools, friends, relatives, familiar streets and the life they knew.
Safety does not always mean the return of childhood. Sometimes it means separation, exile and family stretched across borders. Staying carries its own price. Parents in front-line and border regions live with an almost impossible responsibility. Every decision can affect their children’s safety, health and future. Keeping a child indoors for years may reduce the risk of Russian drones, missiles or shelling, but it can also damage their physical and mental health. Letting them go outside means accepting another kind of danger. There may be no right balance because there is a war.
The story of Victoria Kalashnikova, someone I know personally, captures this dilemma especially clearly. On Feb. 24, 2022, Victoria had an appointment to discuss partnered assisted childbirth. But that morning, Russia launched its full-scale invasion. The appointment was canceled. The doctor later left the city. Victoria was already late in her pregnancy, so she stayed in Sumy and gave birth there. At the time, the city was surrounded by Russian forces. Medicine and food were in short supply. On the day Victoria’s water broke, Russian forces struck a chemical plant on the outskirts of the city. After an ammonia leak, hospital staff tried to seal the ventilation, windows and doors as best they could. So, the first hours of her daughter Marika’s life began not in quiet and safety, but amid war, shortages, shelling and fear of a chemical threat.
Several months later, as the difficult winter approached, Victoria decided to leave Ukraine.
“I understood that I had to take my child somewhere safer,” she told me later. Now Marika is growing up in Switzerland, far from air-raid alerts, but the safety has a cost. Her father remained in Ukraine, and for several years, she has seen him only on a smartphone screen.
Another story comes from my neighbors upstairs. Their family had moved to Sumy from a border town that Russian forces had been destroying since 2023. Bohdan’s parents were trying to protect their four children. At that time, Sumy still seemed a little safer. But in June 2025, Bohdan, their eldest son, was on his way to take an entrance exam for a machine-building college when Russian forces struck the city center with a rocket artillery. He was 17. He was seriously wounded and spent a week in a coma. Doctors tried to save him, but they could not.
How were his parents supposed to live after this? What would they do with their three other children? And how far west do they need to go for their children to be safe?
Read more about how families, teachers and church communities are trying to help children in war-torn Ukraine “Stepping In,” in the September issue of ONE magazine.