Kramatorsk
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If the war kills many people over the years, the names of the dead can bleed onto faceless lists.
But each loss still burns black holes in the world they left behind. And there are fewer than Tymur Hryhorenko.
Most of the bald facts of his death are horribly inconspicuous after three years of Russian artillery fire. He was the only death at 4:40am on the site in a Russian airstrike that hit a top floor apartment in the frontline town of Kramatrataak on July 22nd.
However, one of the most recent children who died in Russia’s war with Ukraine, Timur (10), lost his father in the war two years ago, demanding that he visit Kramatorsk’s grandmother. He was only nine hours away from the relative safety of Kiev, after boarding the train with his mother Nastia.
A video posted by Donetsk Emergency Services shows Tymur’s limp, bloody body. His mother had left him with her grandmother that night, but rushed to the scene.
“Like a breath of new hope,” she said, “One of the soldiers came out and said he had a pulse and they were reviving him. And while they pumped his chest, I prayed to God to give him life. But no miracles happened.”
She said she couldn’t go to the apartment to see his body and felt the worst had happened when her sister rang an hour ago. She called immediately, but was soon back. “She said, ‘They took Mama away, and they’re looking for Tymur under the roof rub.” From that moment on, I felt like I was in a dream. ”
Nastia sat alone on the bench outside her sister’s apartment, in Kreima Talk’s apartment, losing and wet. Taimur was her only child. And his father, Ebhen, died in May 2023, fighting against Russians other than Lyman, despite her separation. She shares a video of Tymur and Evhen playing in bed. Evenen throws his son in and while his father’s skills seem carefree, he becomes extremely careful. Almost a year ago, she remarried, but her second husband died six months later from a heart attack.
She accuses her of not being in her mother’s spare room with her son Taimur when the bomb strikes. “At that moment, I was not home,” she cried. “I don’t know why, how, how the power took me out of it. But I should have been with him, and I blame myself very much for that.”
Timur had insisted that they would go and see his grandmother. However, Nastia insisted that she would leave by train to Kiev the next day. “He said he wanted to stay. I said, ‘No, we’ll go, we’ll definitely go.’ ”
The scene of his death is typical of the eastern town where Ukrainian troops live among locals, with Russian bombs rejecting discrimination and suffering every night. An elderly woman grooming plants in the courtyard tweets how the town’s army is targeted. Another neighbor clears up the broken glass from the stairs, still stained with Timur’s blood. On the roof, the child’s plastic toy is trapped under the felt with a roof facing upwards. Three generations of Nastia’s family live in her mother’s apartment, and at the time of her grandchild’s visit, the children’s toys were stacked in plastic bags.
She remembers their final moments together, the evening before he died. “We got hooked. Giving him a massage when he was a child showed how he was giving him a massage.
She shows a video of a growing boy enjoying a McDonald’s milkshake in “friend” hoodie. Taimur reads a poem about his birthday and family values. It is his small virtue, even at his age, that Nastia clings to the heart most.
“He loved all the animals and children,” she said. “In the Kiev house he is waiting for two pet mice. He loved them like crazy. He called me and said, “Mom, have you cleaned the cage? Did you feed them? Do they have water?”
His teacher praised him for standing up when a girl in his class was chosen. “He’s very considerate,” she said. “A very cheerful boy, very much.”
In June, UNICEF reported that more than 2,700 children were killed or injured in the war in Ukraine.
Timur is located on the outskirts of town, on a hill of fresh tombs, on which he is a chalk stone covered in flowers. The cemetery has a new hole, just dug, and accepting the town’s losses is never finished. The skyline occasionally rattles with blasts, birds scattered and gets in the way of air raid sirens.
