When Russian forces invaded their country in late February, Vladimir Bespalov and Maria Bespalaya feared their longtime dream of starting a family through adoption was over.
“I remember very clearly that morning of February 24,” Vladimir Bespalov, a 27-year-old railway worker, said of the first day of the war. “We thought we were too late. We realized we were already in a state of war and thought we could no longer adopt.”
Instead, the situation prompted the couple to try to do it sooner, he said. “We expected to earn more money, have a better car, buy a house and build something to give to our children first. But when the war started, we thought why not adopt a child now and do this together as a family.”
That day, the married couple, who lived in eastern Ukraine, posted an appeal on social media.
“We want to adopt any boy or girl, any newborn or child,” it read.
Weeks later that message would reach a volunteer helping those fleeing Mariupol, a southern city that has become emblematic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s relentless campaign to seize Ukrainian land, no matter the cost.
Residents were forced to surrender for weeks while Russian troops pounded the town with artillery. It is now a virtual wasteland, with almost all buildings damaged or destroyed and an unknown number of dead under the rubble.
Among the survivors was 6-year-old Ilya Kostushevich, orphaned and alone. Both his parents were killed in the first week of the war.
His mother was hit by Russian artillery after she left home to find food for her family, Bespalov and Bespalaya later learned from the police.
Unaware of his wife’s fate, Ilya’s father went to look for her the next day, only to also be killed by shelling from Moscow’s military, police said.
Little Ilya told how he was left at a neighbor’s house, where he was in a cold, dark basement with strangers for weeks.
He got so hungry that he started eating his toys, Bespalaya said.
“The men were drinking alcohol and the children of these neighbors bullied him. He’s starving and freezing,” Bespalaya told CNN in a low voice. He is careful not to bring up Ilya’s traumatic experience in front of him without prompting, but he has told the woman he now calls “Mom” all about his three terrifying weeks in the basement, he says.
Bespalov and Bespalaya are now Ilya’s legal guardians. They have been a little family for over six months and they plan to officially adopt him as soon as possible. All adoption procedures are currently suspended in Ukraine due to martial law.
Like all parents, the young couple are fiercely protective of Ilya, shielding him from the horrors of war as best they can and trying to give him a sense of security and stability.
“You try to take your mind off the fight and immerse yourself in spending time with your child. We are trying to create memories of a normal childhood. Work takes time, but we spend every free moment together,” said Bespalov, who as a critical railroad worker has not been called up for military service.
But there is nothing normal about war. After posting their appeal on Instagram, the couple created two spare rooms for the possible arrival of a child – one a nursery with a white bed and blue bedding, the other equipped with a bunk bed and lots of toys.
Bespalaya had worked in an orphanage for several years and felt ready for the challenge of raising a child, regardless of the circumstances.
“I just completely stopped being afraid of adoption. I was confident that we were going to have a child and I was confident that I could care about anyone and relate to their character,” she told CNN.
But this plan too was shattered by the war. Immediately after the start, the couple was forced to leave their home in Sloviansk, a city on the front line of the Donetsk region, for Kyiv.
“Our stability was gone. we both lost our jobs and our home. We lost all our savings, we lost everything,” Bespalaya said.
“But we won a lot more.”
In April, they finally got the call they were hoping for, from a volunteer in Mariupol: there was a little boy without parents, could the couple take care of him?
The next morning, they began the two-day drive to Dnipro, where Ilya was sheltering, to meet the boy who would become part of their family.
Once back in Kyiv, they underwent a complicated four-month process to become Ilya’s legal guardians, which included talks with therapists, numerous doctor’s visits, police background checks and a government investigation to ensure the boy had no other children alive. relatives. Various donors, including Shakhtar Donetsk football club, helped provide financial support that allowed the family to find a comfortable home.
“Now we have this love, this love that makes you a family. We didn’t have that baby, but our love is real,” said Bespalaya, with Ilya cuddled between her and Bespalov on a playground bench in Kyiv.
Despite their happiness as a new family unit, life is tougher for Ilya in the evenings, when the capital experiences constant blackouts caused by Russia’s constant attacks on the power grid – leaving the family without power for hours at a time.
“Sometimes he’s scared,” Bespalaya said. “He’s hysterical and will tell me it’s like being back in Mariupol, in the dark.”
But little Ilia learns to cope. As he played with the pair in a candlelit living room during one of the blackouts, he looked up and said, “I’m not afraid of the dark anymore. I know the light will come back on.”
