For almost two and a half months, Iryna Yegorchenko prayed that her son Artyom, one of the Ukrainian soldiers defending the huge Azovstal factory in Mariupol, the last pocket of resistance besieged by Russian forces, would come out unscathed. . On Wednesday, the news fell like a cleaver: Artiom, 22, is dead. Devastated, Iryna says she also felt a sense of relief — at least her son won’t be captured by the Russians.
Nor will he know the hunger or wounds that many of his comrades suffer. “Suddenly I felt relieved. It’s easier to know that your son is dead, than that he is in captivity, injured or crying out for hunger,” explains the 43-year-old woman who lives in kyiv, joined by theAFP by telephone.
Artiom, a burly-looking young man who was an avid boxer, had dug into the steelworks in early March. He will have spent 74 days there with the only means of communication with the outside, Telegram and Instagram. “They weren’t allowed to call. Sometimes he just wrote a + when I asked if he was alive, ”explains Iryna Yegortchenko, a psychologist by profession, who also has a 20-year-old daughter and two other adopted children, aged nine and six.
Artiom always told her he was fine, but was more honest with his friends, she realizes now. “He wrote to them that their days were numbered, that they wouldn’t make it,” she said, her voice charged with emotion.