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 All the while she has her own family to worry about. Her children
are in the region around Sumy, a city some 200 miles (320 km) east
of the capital which has been bombarded by Russian forces.
It is too dangerous for Martynenko to try to reach them, so they are
living with their grandmother.
"We haven't been able to get home since Feb. 24," she told Reuters
on Tuesday, as she changed one of the baby's diapers.
"I am from Sumy region, but I cannot go there. 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."
Martynenko calls her family when she can to see if they are safe and
whether they managed to sleep at night. Ukrainians across the
country are dashing between homes and air raid shelters as advancing
Russian forces attack cities and towns.
"It is not their fault that it happened," she said of the babies in
her care. "It is not their fault that parents cannot come to take
them. So we stay here, we are coping and helping them with what we
can."
In the bare surroundings of the clinic, one nurse pushes a baby
carriage with one hand and holds an infant in the other as she and
her colleagues comfort the children. Babies lie in a line of small
plastic beds and bottles are stacked up to be sterilized.
Staff said that two couples - one from Germany and one from
Argentina - had made it to Kyiv to unite with their surrogate
children, but it was not clear when they would be able to take them
out of the country.
'TERRIFYING'
Ukraine is an international surrogacy hub, involving thousands of
babies each year in normal times, according to some estimates, many
of them taken abroad by foreigners.
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The practice has raised concerns among rights
groups and some former surrogate mothers over
the physical and psychological cost of the
process and the risk of exploitation of women
and their babies in poorer countries.
The infants in the Kyiv clinic were born in
various maternity wards in the capital, and have
been brought to one place for their safety.
Heavy fighting has raged around Sumy in
Ukraine's northeast since Moscow launched what
it calls a "special operation" on Feb. 24 to
demilitarise and "denazify" its neighbour, a
claim Ukraine rejects as a pretext for an
unjustified invasion.
Thousands of people have been killed, millions
have fled the country, and towns and cities have
been badly damaged by shelling, air strikes and
fighting. Russia denies targeting civilians.
So far, Kyiv has been spared the worst of the
fighting, but the Russian military is slowly
closing in on the city and the shelling has
intensified. At least five people were killed in
shelling and air strikes on the city on Tuesday.
An exhausted Antonina Yefymovych, also a nurse,
said that staff were trapped and working around
the clock 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 said.
With the bombardment intensifying, the
explosions are getting louder. "It is terrifying
indeed."
(Additional reporting by Margaryta
Chornokondratenko in Lviv; Writing by Mike
Collett-White; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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