Several nurses are trapped caring for these children and, in turn, giving up their own families who take refuge from the bombings.

Twenty-one babies born by surrogacy in Ukraine are in limbo due to the war. Because the children’s parents cannot access the capital to pick them up, the newborns are housed in a makeshift clinic in a residential basement on the outskirts of Kyiv and have been taken care of by several Ukrainian nurses who have had to move away from their families and their hometowns.

One of the nurses, Oksana Martynenko, told Reuters she has a family of her own and has had to give up being with her children who are in the Sumy region, a town about 320 km away and living with her grandmother. This city is located about 320 km east of the capital and has been bombed by Russian forces and has not been able to return home since February 24, as she explains, “I have children at home … They (the Russians) started to bombard our town yesterday. We wait for news every day about what is happening there … But we cannot leave these babies.”

Antonina Yefymovych, also a nurse, explained that the staff were trapped and working tirelessly to care for the children. 

“We don’t have time to rest now … We try to take short naps, to swap. It is tough, tough,” Yefymovych explained to the aforementioned outlet.

While the Ukrainians move between their homes and the bomb shelters in the face of the advance of the Russian forces, these nurses explain that they cannot abandon the babies, why they have no one and what is not their fault or that of the parents who cannot enter the city to pick them up. In addition, they explained that some of the couples managed to enter Kyiv, but they are not clear when they could pick up their son and flee the country safely.

The children in question were born in several maternity wards in the capital, and have been transferred to this place to maintain their safety. It should be noted that Ukraine is an international center for surrogacy and is the destination chosen by many parents who want both Spain and other countries where it is prohibited.

Ukraine, destination for surrogacy

Ukraine has been until recent years a destination country for Spanish families looking for a child by surrogacy, a practice that is not allowed in Spain. It is a controversial issue, since there is a large feminist movement that rejects these gestation practices, in fact, the Ministry of Equality intends to legislate this practice as a form of violence against women.

The number of families has been shrinking in recent years and the Russian attack has surprised few families in the country. As the association ‘Son Nuestro Hijos‘ has pointed out to Europa Press, all the families that had come to the country in search of their babies have left the country, except for one whose baby was premature and has to remain in an incubator.

Image Credit: Getty

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