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A young woman from the Ukrainian region of Chernihiv has given birth to a baby girl in a cellar where she was taking shelter with 31 other people, with two Russian soldiers, one of whom had medical skills, assisting her to deliver the baby.
Ana Mordyukova is 19 years old, and on March 23, she was in a cellar in the town of Lukashivka, 15 kilometres away from Chernihiv. They were all hiding from Russian troops who had invaded their village and were waging open war with the Ukrainian army.
At the time of the birth, there were several close relatives by her side. Because they did not have medicines, they turned to the Russian military, who had been in the village for a few weeks, for help.
"During the occupation, we stayed here first, and later our neighbours joined us one by one. When the Russians came, we were 32 people here, including children. We were thinking of building another floor in the cellar, a place for the children to sleep, but on the 9th day the Russians entered the village and then a shell fell in the yard, destroyed our house and the blast of the explosion ripped away the door to our cellar. (...) As for the child, it was born a month after the start of the war. A baby girl was born here on March 23. An officer, a Russian military nurse and a midwife from our village came in. The midwife was the one who sat next to the young mother. The Russian military had everything needed from a medical point of view. They were there just in case," Irina Terikhova, the owner of the cellar where the birth took place, told AGERPRES.
Although Mordyukova is only 19 years old, this was her second birth. The young Ukrainian, a cook by trade, decided to name her little girl Victoria, as a symbol of Ukraine's victory over Russia. Initially, she would have liked the girl to be named Carolina or Corina, but then he decided to call her Victoria.
She never thought she would give birth outside of a maternity ward or among bullets.
"I thought I would give birth normally. On March 24 I had to go to the hospital. I had an appointment to see the doctor. I heard gunshots, but I thought that in the 21st century there can be no war (...) I had more names such as Carolina and Corina, but, after I gave birth in the cellar, only one name remained, Victoria," said Mordyukova.
The Ukrainian hopes that little Victoria will have a quiet, peaceful life with her older sister, Angelina, and the other Ukrainian children.
AGERPRES
