Artem
Artem Skrypchenko, 12 y.o. Toretsk. Escaped from the rubble of the house and lost his father there. The boy created a series of drawings about the war.
Artem Skrypchenko, 12 y.o. Toretsk. Escaped from the rubble of the house and lost his father there. The boy created a series of drawings about the war.
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On February 24, when Mom and Dad said that the war had started, I thought that we would come to our little cottage in the village of Yatskivka, where we would wait until everything calmed down, and then we’d return home. We have always done this since 2014 because we lived in the Donetsk region, 25 km from Horlivka, and the missiles were constantly flying above our heads. So, at that time, we also thought that it would be safer in the country. In general, I used to think that war was when the armies fought between themselves.
But I didn’t expect that the enemy would strike directly at civilians.
At first, everything was relatively good, we only heard the noise of the planes overhead. We were sitting in the small corridor or in the basement, and when we went down there again on March 11, 2022, the missile hit our house. Dad couldn’t get out, he was burned up right in front of our eyes. Some man took my Mom and me, along with my little sister, and brought us to Sviatohirsk. Next it was the police station, the medical assistance, and the sleepless night after all we had to go through. My uncle came from Kyiv, picked us up, and evacuated us to Ternopil.
I started drawing the pictures in Sviatohirsk, they are all dedicated to the war and to my Daddy, whom we loved so much. I want people to look at them and remind themselves of what is happening. Maybe this will encourage them to donate more for our victory so that something like this never happens again.
When I grow up, I plan to become a doctor to save lives.
Many people may become disabled after this war. And besides being a surgeon, the doctor can also develop prostheses. It will be possible to buy a 3D printer and to print small prostheses on it — I would like to do that. But I am only 12 years old now, another 10 years will pass, and the world will change. Maybe I will want to be someone else – a programmer, for example.
What I definitely want is that the war ends and that our country becomes stronger, so that something like this never happens again. However, what amazes me the most is that we are a rather small state and we can withstand against such a big country.
I hope that everything will end quickly and that we will return to our hometowns, our native homes to live as we did before.
