The Russian invasion of Ukraine has entered its second week with thousands dead and more than two million refugees – the highest number in Europe since World War II. Hso far almost 35,000 people have managed to be rescued through humanitarian corridors in Ukraine. as announced by President Zelensky.
“In total, some 35,000 people have been rescued. We will continue tomorrow,” said the president, who explained that they have achieved “organize the work of three humanitarian corridors. From the city of Sumy, from the cities and towns of the Kiev region and from Energodar.”
The president has also indicated that the Ukrainian authorities are preparing six new humanitarian corridors to remove the population from the areas attacked by Russian forces: “We are preparing six runners. We pray that people will be able to leave Mariupol, Izium, Volnovakha, etc. Taken to safe cities of our free Ukraine.”
Despite this circumstance, there are still many citizens who cannot escape the war even by using these corridors. They are elderly people, men called to the front, sick children who need hospital care and also women: mothers of these children, caregivers of the elderly and also of the sick.
They and the minors are the ones who bear the brunt of this war and seek refuge in makeshift cellars and other shelters to avoid being killed by Russian bombswhich have already reached a mother and child hospital in the city of Mariupol.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, at least three people have died there, including two children, and 17 others have been injured. The snapshots that arrive from the place are terrifying and in them you can see injured pregnant women being evacuated after the attack.
Zelensky has called this bombing an “atrocity”: “The children are under the rubble. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be complicit in ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killing!”
But this is not the only place in Ukraine from which horrifying images arrive. In Kherson, several pregnant women about to give birth are taking refuge in a basement in which they do not have all the necessary means in case a delivery is complicated.
This is the basement of the Kherson Regional Clinical Hospital. One of the center’s workers explained on Facebook that “life goes on”: “Jerson is in the basement, but we are not giving up! Never in my life did I think I would give birth to a baby in such conditions.”
“There are pregnant women in a room (including 2 twins), a woman who needs an operation, premature babies, children of our staff and staff who have not been able to contact their families for days. Two women in labor who are about to give birth. Including two of my children who are 10 years old! I never thought I would teach them midwifery so soon.”he lamented.
In Kiev the situation is no different. From there come startling images of the basement of the Okhmadet children’s hospitalwhere dozens of children with cancer are sheltered with their mothers.
Hospital staff have said they want the world to know what is happening there. So far the hospital has been spared from the bombing and in that underground bunker, dozens of children and their parents sleep on mats, some in need of oxygen machines and others connected to drippers.
There the sick little ones, accompanied by their mothers, they hold sheets of paper with the words “no to war” and allow themselves to be photographed by the journalists who come to tell their story.
And it is that women, as in almost all conflicts, take the worst part. Their role as caregivers ties them to the Ukraine. A clear example is the mother of the boy who days ago arrived alone and with a phone number written in his hand to the border with Slovakia to save themselves from the war.
His mother, who lives in a town near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, explained that she was unable to leave with her son because she has to take care of her mother: “She can’t move independently. So I sent my son alone on a train to the Slovakian border.”she explained visibly excited.
Ukrainian women have been at double risk since the invasion began, because, as the Ukrainian journalist and analyst Margarita Yakovenko explained in Al Rojo Vivo, Ukrainian women are “the ones who go out to stand in line in stores, the ones who are taking care of the older and those who are taking care of the children.
Source: Lasexta
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
