KYIV – One year ago around midday, Iryna Dmytriyeva was strolling in Victory Square, in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsya, along with her daughter Liza. They were heading for an appointment with a speech therapist, to help Liza, a vibrant 4-year-old whose struggles with Down syndrome – as well as her joys and accomplishments -- Iryna had documented on social media.
The city was hit by cruise missiles, several believed to have been fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea. Liza was killed on the spot, one of 27 people, including two other children, who died in the July 14, 2022, attack. Iryna was badly wounded and was hospitalized briefly in a coma.
“We raised our heads together and saw a rocket right above us. It fell on the House of Officers, in that direction. I thought, ‘That’s it’,” Dmytriyeva told Current Time. “I leaned on the stroller. My face was next to Liza’s. Then an explosion, the earth shook.”
“I sat down near the stroller and started screaming. My phone rang in my bag. My mother called; she was waiting for us in the center, and, of course, the explosion was heard everywhere, all over Vinnytsya,” she said.
“I told her that Liza was killed by a rocket, and hung up,” she recalled. “I called my [former] husband and said, ‘Liza was killed, and I’m dying too’.”
Thousands if not tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed over the 17 months since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sending troops to seize territory and pummeling the country with missiles and drones targeting not only military facilities, but also homes, civilian buildings, electricity grids, and water pumping stations.
Liza was one of those killed by a Russian missile.
In an interview on July 11, Dmytriyeva said she remains numbed by the pain of losing her daughter. And angry.
“Even if all of Russia is destroyed, it will not bring back our loved ones,” she said, speaking by video from her home in Vinnytsya.
“A lot of people are involved in this” war, she said. "Justice will be done when absolutely all [Russians who are guilty of war crimes] are destroyed to the last drop of blood."
'Every New Skill Is A Great Joy'
Liza was born to Dmytriyeva and her then-husband -- the couple later split -- in March 2018. Before she was born, doctors had cautioned that Liza would be a special-needs child. She underwent heart surgery at 7 months.
In a running chronicle of her challenges and adventures raising Liza, Dmytriyeva, now 34, wrote that they were determined "to show Liza the world, not hide her between four walls."
"For us mothers of special-needs children, every new skill is a great joy -- behind which is a lot of work," she wrote in one post to Instagram.
In the aftermath of the attack, Dmytriyeva was also hospitalized, with traumatic injuries to one leg and shrapnel wounds throughout her body. Her memories dulled by anesthesia and pain medications, she said she briefly forgot about her daughter and that doctors and relatives lied to her, not wanting to upset her while she was recovering.
“I woke up and saw a lot of people around me. I asked: 'Liza is dead?' she recalled. “No one answered me. I started screaming, and then I don’t remember anything.”
"Why? Why did you save me?" Dmytriyeva said she asked the doctors.
Before the February 2022 invasion, Dmytriyeva stayed in regular touch with relatives in Russia: her mother’s cousin and her children. After the invasion, “disagreements began,” she said, and it was hard, if not impossible, to stay in touch.
After Liza’s death, Dmytriyeva said, relatives called Dmytriyeva’s mother to express condolences. Dmytriyeva herself, she said, refused to talk to them.
“For me, these people do not exist, and I don’t want to know anything,” she said. “For me, this country is completely dead.”
Dmytriyeva said her chronicles of raising Liza had drawn a sizable audience and followers, on Instagram, including many Russians, some of whom faced similar challenges with their children. In the months after the invasion – before and after her daughter’s death -- many in Russia began to unfollow her, she said, as her posts also featured criticism of Russians for the invasion.
“After the tragedy, even some people from Russia told me: ‘I'm sorry. We won’t be able to communicate with you, since you have become a threat to us,” Dmytriyeva said.
After undergoing more surgeries and recovery at a hospital in Austria, Dmytriyeva returned home, and she volunteers to help groups for children at orphanages who have special needs.
She also continues to write about being a parent to a Down syndrome child, trying, she said, to break down stereotypes and misconceptions about what that means.
“Liza was ordinary for me, albeit with some special qualities,” she said. “Before the war, she went to an ordinary kindergarten. In the evening I picked her up, we constantly walked, had a busy time, played, she went to speech therapists and other specialists. Absolutely normal development in a child.”
“Yes, it was a little difficult, but everything is possible. We have ‘special’ children who are immediately buried,” she said, referring to social expectations about special-needs children.
She said in Western countries that isn’t the case.
“Why is it so in the West, but in our country, it is different?” she said.
“When I feel that I can do at least something to solve problems for ‘special’ children in Ukraine, it warms my heart,” she said. “I understand that I am on the right track, on the right road.”
