Yesterday I posted a real life story and today I am going to explore what the story was about.

The story can be found here if you wish to go back to it.

On 9th March 2022, nineteen days into Russia’s war with Ukraine, a Russian airstrike hit the maternity hospital in the soon to be besieged city of Mariupol. The media exposed the horror of what happened and it was encapsulated in one image that went around the world. In the image it showed a pregnant woman being carried on a stretcher with streaks of blood around her midriff - this more graphic part is more often than not pixelated or blurred to avoid any distress on the part of the viewer. I am not entirely convinced that such images should be censored so long as they can be kept from those of a sensitive nature or minors (and that in itself is the problem).

That Image Once Seen Can Never be Unseen

Sometimes we need to see the full horror of what is meant by the oft-used phrase of humanity’s inhumanity to man.

The image has remained with me ever since as though it has been seared into my brain and branded onto my retinas. I always had the impression that the woman was emergency evacuated midway through a Caesarean and that the baby died as a consequence of the necessary withdrawal of medical support while mother and baby were being moved after the bomb / missile hit.

I have no evidence that this was the case but, as with the image, this thought has remained with me ever since.

Some media outlets reported that the baby, a boy, was stillborn and the eyewitness account of a midwife who was present and later interviewed by the BBC supports this view, while others stated that he died as a newborn. It is not my intention or purpose to ascertain what the truth was, as this would not add to my reason for writing this short story. Even if the baby was stillborn, it doesn’t mean that the war and resulting stress was not a causal effect. Again this is an unsubstantiated, but valid possibility.

When she became aware that she had lost her son, the woman in utter despair and lost in grief beyond description, begged to be left to die. Even if her heart was still beating, her life and any hopes or aspirations she had, ended at the very moment when her son died.

The woman is not some anonymous, soon to be forgotten, casualty of war. She had a name, she was Iryna Kalinina and she had everything to live for and what is more, the baby boy had a name too.

Iryna and Ivan

She and her husband Ivan had decided to call their baby Miron, derived from the Russian word Mir (peace), which must have been an expression of their aspirations and wishes for the war, still in its very early days, to come to an end.

Now if we cast our minds back just a few short months before that dreadful day, in March 2022, to July 2021, things were very, very different.

There was no widespread war (only the “unofficial” one in The Donbass) and Mariupol was a thriving Black Sea port city of almost half a million people that many of the residents described as a wonderful place to live.

Against this backdrop, Iryna and Ivan found out they were expecting and were undoubtedly excited about becoming first time parents. There must have been countless conversations and things done in preparation for the arrival of the new baby.

The author is of course speculating here, but they must have been so excited and having thoughts about preparing a nursery. Iryna was probably undoubtedly concentrating, as many woman in particular do, on nest-making and wondering when to start her maternity leave. At the time she had a job managing a clothes shop in the centre of Mariupol. At the same time Ivan was probably speaking with pride about how he was going to become a father and may have beamed at the thought of a son (if they knew) or he might even have glowed at the thought of having a daughter as beautiful as his beloved wife.

They went along to regular scans to check on the health of baby Miron and watched him grow from the size of a tiny relatively shapeless peanut into a recognisable child who would soon be born and become a part of their loving family.

They may even have quarrelled and fought from time to time as they prepared for their lives to be turned upside down by their new arrival. But it was their lives, probably ordinary and mundane, and they were just muddling through as best they could, just like the rest of us do, while holding on to their love for each other and the love they had for the infant Miron, who was growing and developing inside Iryna’s belly.

Then as 2021 turned into 2022 the media began to report on a massive military buildup on the Russian side of the border. Putin kept repeating that his army were on exercises and that they would soon be going home. Few believed him.

The world held its collective breath.

Then on the 22nd February Putin make his move. Luhansk and Donetsk declared “independence” and Russian troops crossed the border as “Peacekeepers”.  Two days later, on 24th February, Putin struck with a full scale invasion that he called a “special military operation”, His invasion might have succeeded but for two things that happened north of Kyiv. Firstly, the Ukrainian defence forces blew up a vital bridge at the small commuter town of Irpin, and secondly they put up heroic resistance at Antonov airport in Hostomel, during which they destroyed much of the elite of the Russian forces who had been tasked with taking the capital.

The war might have ended very differently had the elite Russian troops taken the airport and been able to cross the river at Irpin.

While that secured the country from almost immediate defeat and enabled it to keep fighting, Russian forces also broke out of illegally annexed Crimea and headed both north towards Kherson and northeast to link up with their compatriots who were progressing down the coast in a westward direction.

Mariupol lay between these northeast moving troops and those moving west out of Russia itself. Within weeks it was under siege as Putin aimed to create a land bridge between Crimea and the Russian heartland.

And it was here and during this time, that Putin’s warplanes struck the maternity hospital and among countless others who died in the merciless and cowardly bombardment of civilians we can count Iryna and Miron.

Miron is very much a symbol of everything that’s wrong with this war (and war in general) and he must be remembered.

But he was more than a symbol.

Miron’s was a life not lived, but he will be remembered.