“This is my son!” Little Serzhi lived only two days

The baby was born quickly. On the fateful night he slept in a cradle next to Maria’s bed. He tells reporters of the “Washington Post” that when the rocket hit the house, the brick wall collapsed, burying the doctor who was screaming for help. The ceiling collapsed on Maria, everything was filled with smoke, it was hard to breathe.

She searched for her son in the crib, but was thrown out of the crib by the force of the impact. In the dark and smoke, she crawled on the floor covered in broken glass, making her cell phone screen shine, looking for her son.

She vaguely remembers the rest: how her rescuers dragged her out the window, how the nurses pulled shrapnel from her legs, how she called her mother on the phone to tell her a rocket had hit the maternity ward.

Maria clearly only remembers that she was yelling for her son all the time.

Eventually, rescuers found him. It wasn’t a fallen doll. It was two-day-old Sergi.

Both buried their son with their husband and a couple of relatives the next day. They didn’t want to take the box indoors where the other children could see it.

The night after the funeral, Maria saw her newborn son in a dream. She complained of being hungry. The next day, Maria brought biscuits and chocolate to the grave. She also brought little Serži’s sisters and brothers with her to show them where their little brother, whom they have never met, slept.

Little Serzhi Podlianov is one of the last victims of the war started by Russia in Ukraine. According to approximate data from the official authorities of Ukraine, 440 children were killed, 851 injured.