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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Ryan Merrifield

Ukraine toddler scrawled on by desperate mum finally safe from Russian troops

A Ukrainian toddler who had her name and family's contact details written onto her back by her desperate mum as Russia invaded is now safe.

Sasha Makoviy shared an image of two-year-old daughter Vira's back with pen scrawled over her skin which quickly went viral.

Weeks after fleeing capital Kyiv, the pair are now living in a quiet French village along with Sasha's mum Anna Klymenko.

Their rental home in Lespignan, near Béziers, in southern France, was lent to her by a family keen to help refugees.

Sasha said she feared losing her child in the hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an assault on the fellow former Soviet nation on February 24.

Sasha wrote daughter Vira's name and details on her back (Instagram.com/@alexsandra.mako)
She also attached a card to her jacket with information on it (Instagram.com/@alexsandra.mako)

The 33-year-old admitted one of her biggest fears was that Moscow troops would steal Vira.

It turned out to be justified, with the Ukrainian government since going on to claim Russia had removed children from besieged cities like Mariupol, and shipped them over the border.

Sasha said she was more prepared than most in her homeland for an invasion.

Sasha and Vira fled Kyiv in the days after the war started (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

She has been worrying about such catastrophic action after visiting Russia several years ago and seeing an underground announcement telling travellers it was the "best country in the world".

She said it all sounded a "little bit Nazi".

After giving birth to Sasha she had suffered with postnatal depression and visited a therapist where she realised "my worst fear was to lose my freedom, to go to a concentration camp".

During the Soviet era her great-grandfather was imprisoned for eight years for denouncing corruption and her father spent his two-year military service building a railroad because he was caught buying work from dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Sasha told the Times : "I wasn’t scared of dying but of being dead and the thought that nobody could bring up Vira as I would."

Vira had been "long-awaited" and her mum was keen to bring her up among "love and books and art" with her family's values and feared if she was taken she would never know her origins.

Sasha said some of her friends and her own mum were initially adamant about remaining in the Ukrainian capital (AFP via Getty Images)

"For those who have lost their parents, for their mental health, it is really important to know that you were longed-for," she added.

Sasha was a painter, art teacher and gallery assistant in Kyiv.

Due to her travels around Europe and being tuned into international media, she was exposed to American and British intelligence warning in November last year an invasion could be imminent.

Ukrainian evacuees queue as they wait for further transport at the Medyka border crossing (AFP via Getty Images)

She began to pack away documents, water, medicines and other essentials in case of the worst - though her friends thought she was behaving "hysterically".

Part of the information she'd read was that scissors could be needed to remove clothing in case of emergency, which is why she wrote on Vira's skin.

Once the bombs started dropping she fled with her daughter to Vinnytsia, southwest of the capital, then across the border to Romania.

From there they flew to Brussels, in Belgium, and then to France.

Sasha's mum, 57, initially wanted to stay in Kyiv before being persuaded to flee to Poland and joined her daughter and granddaughter in France.

Days later her neighbourhood was bombed.

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