Can you imagine this nightmare? You’re a 14-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect. Armed soldiers in balaclavas storm into your home. Fingers on triggers, they “persuade” you to renounce Ukraine and swear allegiance to Russia. Your dad is threatened with forced conscription, your mom with losing parental rights if you don’t attend a Russian school.

Katia lived through this. Her heart, already fragile and supported by an implanted occluder, couldn’t handle the stress. She fainted in the street after a soldier pointed a rifle at her mother, demanding she get into their car. Katia was driven to a nervous breakdown. In the hospital, a so-called Russian “psychologist” told her, “They just wanted to take you for a ride.”

Once, occupiers spotted a Ukrainian coat of arms pendant on Katia’s sister’s boyfriend. They tortured him with electric shocks, broke his ribs, and beat him until he suffered a concussion. Can you grasp the terror this child endured? But today, Katia is safe.

“My mom and I cried when we saw the sign that said ‘Ukraine’. We realized we didn’t have to be afraid anymore,” she says.

Save Ukraine and WeAreAllUkrainians are working together to rescue Ukrainian children from the occupied territories. The rescued families and children undergo recovery and adaptation at Save Ukraine’s “Hope and Healing” centers.

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