Olga Slychyk feared the worst in January when her husband, a Ukrainian military engineer serving on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, did not call her to wish her a happy birthday.
Of course, her 40-year-old husband Mykhaïlo could sometimes be unreachable for several days, but she was convinced that if he had been safe and sound, he would have found a way to contact her on January 14.
"I was sure that he would call me or find a way to wish me. But I had had a very bad dream and I already knew that something was wrong," the woman told AFP. 30 years old dressed in black, her son Viktor, two years old, in her arms.
The next day, she learned that Mykhailo had been killed in Soledar, a town in the east conquered by the Russians in January.
More than a year after the start of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian military has not made public the extent of its losses. US intelligence documents leaked on the internet mention 17,500 soldiers killed.
Olga Slychyk joined an online widows' group, which had over 300 members at the time of her husband's death. Today, the number has doubled as fighting rages in the east, particularly in Bakhmout.
Mrs. Slychyk, originally from Mariupol (south-east), a martyred city that fell in the first months of the Russian invasion, still explains that she talks to her husband "all the time, in (his) head and out loud".
"When I can't open a tin can, I cry in frustration and exclaim Micha, I can't even do that and then suddenly it opens," she says.
Daria Mazour, 41, learned of her husband's death in 2014 through photos of his bloodied corpse published in Russian media, after a deadly battle in eastern Ukraine where Moscow was piloting pro-Russian separatist armed forces .
"Time doesn't heal. You get used to it. You accept it. You learn to live with it. And that pain becomes part of you," she explains in her kitchen in Kiev, alongside photos showing her smiling husband with their child in her arms.
They met on a beach in 2006, and got married in 2010 in the Kherson region (south). Daria fled it when the Russians arrived in early 2022, and her hometown remains occupied today.
Her last conversations with her husband Pavlo, who was 30 when she died, betrayed her concern.
"He was like, 'Please promise me you'll be happy no matter what happens to me,'" she recalled.
"These men give their lives so that we can continue to live," she adds, speaking of the soldiers on the front lines.
It was precisely this need to continue to live that prompted Oksana Borkoun, also a war widow, to create "We Have to Live", the widow support organization that Olga joined.
"Women are facing immense pain. It's possible to go crazy about it. Life goes on around you, so you have to talk to those who understand," she explains.
The organization collects money to offer logistical and moral support to widows, but it is above all a platform to speak and share their experiences and their suffering.
For Olga Slychyk, her husband's family proved to be stronger support than her own. His mother, also a widow for two years, lives in Donetsk, under pro-Russian control since 2014, and she does not support Ukraine.
And the fact that they both lost their husbands didn't bring them closer, says Ms Slychyk.
But above all, she says she is "torn", wondering if Mykhaïlo's ultimate sacrifice was worth it.
"He told me he was going there (to the war) for me and Viktor," she explains, before addressing her late husband: "If you want me safe, fine, then I I need you by my side, not elsewhere".
17/04/2023 12:10:55 - Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
