On the front line in Ukraine’s east, Russian troops continue to press hard and Donetsk regional head Vadym Filashkin has said they have almost reached the centre of the town of Vuhledar.
Just 107 people are said to remain in the bombed out town with children already evacuated and humanitarian aid “almost impossible” to deliver – according to Filashkin.
As part of Defenders Day, President Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to those who had been killed in the fighting, saying: “You sacrifice yourselves so that Ukraine does not have to be sacrificed.”
Yuliya’s partner, Bogdan, served as an army medic treating people during the devastating siege of Mariupol before he was captured by Russian troops.
“I have a daughter, she’s five years old so I think she helps me a lot because she’s my sense now to live. I need to be strong. And I need to be now a mother and a father in one person.”
Bogdan was one of dozens who died in the July 2022 explosion at Olenivka prison, which Kyiv believes was a deliberate attempt by Russia to destroy evidence of war crimes although Moscow blamed Ukrainian missiles.
For countless Ukrainian families, remembrance is a private act, as well as a public one.
Yuliya says she wants to her daughter to remember her father: “What he did for us and everything we have now is because of him. He was protecting us.”
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