A basement bomb shelter has been set up in Kiev, where at least 20 surrogate children are waiting for their foreign mothers to allow them to take them home.
The infants are only a few days old and well looked after. However, you can hear the occasional shelling from below the ground.
Many nurses from the surrogacy center are also trapped in the shelter, as it is too dangerous for them to travel home. As they try to encircle Kyiv, Ukrainian troops are resisting Russian forces in the suburbs of Kyiv.
Lyudmilia Yaschchenko, a 51 year-old nurse, said that they are now staying there to save our lives and those of the babies. “We are hiding from the bombings and this terrible misery.”
Yashchenko stated that they go out for a short time during the day, but not to stay too long. She is also concerned about her children — her two sons, aged 22 and 30, are fighting for their country.
The constant struggle for exhaustion is a constant.
“We’re almost not sleeping,” Yashchenko stated. “We work round the clock.”
Surrogacy is a very popular industry in Ukraine. It’s one of few countries that allows foreigners to use it. The parents of these babies are from Europe, Latin America, and China.
Yashchenko wouldn’t say how many parents have arrived to adopt their children, how many are still waiting for them or how many surrogate mothers will be delivering soon.
There is plenty of food and baby supplies for their infants, but the nurses wait to pick them up. It’s just like waiting for the war to end.
