The First Day of War in Mariupol, Ukraine: Vladimir and Ilya Bespalaya, a Railroad Worker and their Legal Guardians
When Russian forces invaded their country in February, Vladimir Bespalov and Maria Bespalaya feared it was the end of their dream of starting a family through adoption.
“I remember that morning of February 24, very clearly,” said Vladimir Bespalov, a 27-year-old railroad worker, of the first day of the war. We thought we were late. We realized we were already in a state of war, and we thought we could no longer adopt.”
The situation pushed the couple to do it sooner. We were waiting to build something to give to our children, buy a car, and buy a house, but only if we could earn more money. We wanted to accomplish these things together as a family, and so we thought we’d adopt a child now.
Weeks later that message would reach a volunteer helping those fleeing Mariupol, a southern city that became emblematic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ruthless campaign to take Ukrainian land, no matter the cost.
Residents were forced underground for weeks while Russian troops pummeled the city with artillery. It is now a wasteland, with nearly every building damaged or destroyed, and an unknown number of dead beneath the rubble.
His mother was struck down by Russian artillery after she left home to find food for her family, Bespalov and Bespalaya were later to learn from police.
The men were drinking and they were being abused by the children of their neighbors. He was starving and freezing,” Bespalaya told CNN in a hushed voice. She is careful not to discuss the traumatic experience he had in front of him, but that’s what he told her.
Bespalov and Bespalaya are now his legal guardians. They have been a little family for more than six months, and they plan to formally adopt him as soon as possible. All adoption processes are currently suspended in Ukraine due to martial law.
Like any parents, the young couple are fiercely protective of Ilya, sheltering him from the horrors of war the best they can and trying to give him a sense of security and stability.
“You try to take your mind off the fighting and immerse yourself in spending time with your child. We attempt to recreate memories of a normal childhood. Work takes time, but we spend every free moment together,” said Bespalov, who as a crucial railroad worker has not been called up for military service.
There’s nothing normal about war. After they posted their appeal on Instagram, the couple set up two spare rooms for the possible arrival of a child – one a nursery with a white crib and blue bedding, the other equipped with a bunk bed and lots of toys.
“I just totally stopped being afraid of adoption. I was confident that we would have a child and I could deal with anyone’s character, I told CNN.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/europe/ukraine-orphaned-boy-new-family-intl-cmd/index.html
“I am already dead, and I am going to die”: The two-day journey to Dnipro to meet Bespalaya
The plan too was shattered by war. They were forced to leave their home in Slovyansk, a city in the frontline of the Donbas region, for Kyiv after the beginning of the conflict.
In April, they finally received the call they had been hoping for, from a volunteer in Mariupol: there was a little boy with no parents, could the couple care for him?
The following morning, they started out on the two-day car journey to Dnipro, where Ilya was sheltering, to meet the boy who would become part of their family.
It’s that love that makes you a family. “We were not blessed with a baby, but our love is real,” Bespalaya said on the playground bench.
But little Ilya is learning to cope. As he played with a couple in a living room lit by candles, he looked up and said “I am not afraid of the dark anymore.” The light will turn back on.
I quoted Svetlana’s comment that she was going to die in her memoir “Only One Year.” She writes that she is Stalin’s daughter. You are already dead. Your life is done. You can’t live your own life. You can’t live a life. You exist only in reference to a name.”
A memoir of Stalin and the fate of his son, Alexander Burdonsky, during his time in charge of a homicidal system
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was back in the spotlight last week after appearing at two lavish military events in Pyongyang. He is pictured with his generals at a midnight parade of missiles. Beside him stands his roughly 9-year-old daughter.
The photo is identical to one taken almost 100 years ago when Stalin standing on a balcony watching a military parade with a young girl beside him.
Will she inherit her father’s will but not kill him? Or will she prove a well-trained apprentice and possibly become more dangerous than her father? The closed universe of North Korea is likely to result in the latter.
I spoke to Alexander Burdonsky, Stalin’s grandson, on a trip to Moscow in 2013, who stated that life in the soviet army felt like a liberation after living at home. Like his aunt Svetlana, he took his mother’s name to escape his lineage.
The age of Stalin when he married his mother was 38 years old and that is the same age as Aleksei Kapler who had a first chaste love affair with her when she was 16. Stalin exiled Kapler to the Gulag for 10 years for having the audacity to romance his daughter. This was when Svetlana began to understand who her father was. Her status was dependent upon a lot of things.
She summed up her life in her memoir: “Wherever I go, whether to Australia or some island, I will always be the political prisoner of my father’s name.”
I was told by Burdonsky that the children of dictators have two options, either to totally reject their heritage or follow in their father’s footsteps. He said Svetlana was caught in between. She did not defend her father’s murderousness, but she thought he had been turned into a sinkhole for all the evil of his regime.
“He knew what he was doing,” she said of her father in her memoir. He was not insane or misled. With cold calculation he cemented his power, afraid of losing it more than anything else in the world.” A dictator needs people to help him. He was the head of a homicidal system she had the courage to reject.
This makes me think of Russian President Vladimir Putin today. We know virtually nothing about Kim Jung Un’s daughter, but we know a little about Putin’s two daughters, Mariya and Katerina. People who are children of the first person are not allowed to speak about them.
Classmates didn’t know who they were, they went to school under assumed names and had security guards watch them at home and at the movies. The journalist asked if Putin wrapped his hands around the little fingers of the girls. Their mother Lyudmila replied: “Nobody can wrap Papa around their little finger.”
It looks like Putin’s daughters have decided on his side. It is reported that Katerina is head of a new AI institute at Moscow State University and is said to be worth several billion. According to US officials, Mariya leads a program that has received billions of dollars from the Kremlin. Supposedly neither have political ambitions, which is reportedly the way Putin wants it.