People
How 12-Year-Old Orphan Was Unwittingly Sucked Into Russia’s Ukraine Propaganda: ‘She Is So Scared’
Virginia Chamlee – April 19, 2022
SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Mariupol
Amid Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine, a 12-year-old orphaned girl has somehow found herself unwittingly at the center of the country’s propaganda efforts, a new report details.
According to a CNN story published Sunday, Kira Obedinsky — whose mother died when she was a child — found herself parent-less when her dad was killed in Russia’s assault on Mariupol, one of the hardest-hit parts of Ukraine in recent weeks.
CNN reports that, days after her father was shot to death on March 17, Kira and her dad’s girlfriend attempted to leave on foot, but she was injured in a landmine explosion. And that’s when things took a turn.
Kira was taken to a hospital controlled by Moscow-backed separatists and, in footage released by Russian media, could be seen looking happy while talking about how she was allowed to call her grandfather.
While the video is meant to send a positive message, the girl’s grandfather, named Oleksander, told CNN it was a false one. The reality, he said, was that Kira is alone, without any family, and was relocated without her will.
He told the network that Russians forces had taken away Kira’s documents and told her she would be provided with new ones in Russia, where she would eventually be taken to an orphanage — an account adding to others of Ukrainians forcibly moved to Russia during the war.
Oleksander added to CNN that, in an audio message Kira sent him, she could be heard saying: “I haven’t seen you for so long. I want to cry.”
Reportedly speaking to The Guardian, the 67-year-old Oleksander said his granddaughter seemed okay when he able to connect with her via video call.
“She was in a hospital bed, she had shrapnel wounds around her ear and face and her legs, but she seemed okay,” he told the newspaper. “I was so relieved. But she told me she’s in Donetsk [a separatist region in eastern Ukraine], and it seems like she’s on her own. She told me they’re taking her to a Russian city.”
Elsewhere in the interview, however, he said his granddaughter seemed “scared” by the confusing situation.
“She is so scared. She doesn’t know where or why she is going,” Oleksander said. “I can’t say for sure what she understands about what’s going on and the war … She’s seen people killed in front of her, explosions and shelling. She just wants to come back to her family and come back home.”
RELATED VIDEO: Maks Chmerkovskiy Returns to Poland to Help Refugees Escaping Ukraine — ‘It Is Getting Worse’
RELATED: Ukraine Accuses Russia of Taking Civilian as Hostages Back to Moscow
A Ukrainian official claimed last month that more than 400,000 people in the country had been taken to Russia against their will as the war rages.
Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsperson monitoring human rights, said those people could be used as “hostages” to pressure the country to relent as it defends itself from attack. Russia has insisted that the people actually wanted to leave Ukraine.
The number of those relocated includes 84,000 children, the Associated Press reported in March.
Russian forces were also blamed for taking at least one entire Ukrainian city — Chernihiv — hostage by cutting off its access to the capital city of Kyiv.
In Mariupol, where Obedinsky was living prior to the war, the situation has been similarly dire.
Just last month, the Mariupol city council said that “several thousand” residents had been forcibly taken to Russia, CNN reported.
According to the network, the city issued a statement in which it claimed “the occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhny district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing.”
The statement added that some of those residents were taken to camps, where Russians checked their phones and documents, then to remote cities in Russia, per CNN.
Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo Neighbors wait for a free food delivery in Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 8.
RELATED: Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy Wants His Kids to Know Soldiers Are Dying to Keep His Family Alive
Russian forces launched their large-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 — marking the first major land conflict in Europe in decades.
Details of the fighting change by the day, but hundreds of civilians have already been reported dead or wounded, including children. Millions of Ukrainians have also fled, the United Nations says.
“You don’t know where to go, where to run, who you have to call. This is just panic,” Liliya Marynchak, a 45-year-old teacher in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, told PEOPLE of the moment her city was bombed — one of numerous accounts of bombardment by the Russians.
The invasion, ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has drawn condemnation around the world and increasingly severe economic sanctions against Russia.
With NATO forces massing in the region around Ukraine, various countries have also pledged aid or military support to the resistance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for peace talks — so far unsuccessful — while urging his country to fight back.
Putin insists Ukraine has historic ties to Russia and he is acting in the best security interests of his country. Zelenskyy vowed not to bend.
“Nobody is going to break us, we’re strong, we’re Ukrainians,” he told the European Union in a speech in the early days of the fighting, adding, “Life will win over death. And light will win over darkness.”