Daria Svertilova

They Used to Be Here (2024)

Tetiana was rescued from the Kherson region, where she and her parents spent almost two years under Russian occupation. At some point, her parents stopped letting her go outside because Russian authorities were coercing them into getting her a Russian birth certificate and threatening to take away their parental rights. Tetiana didn’t go to school either because, like every school in the occupied territories, it had been turned into a Russian institution and a place of indoctrination.

28. 08. 2024

Entrance to the bomb shelter of Novopetrivka boarding school, Mykolaiv region. Pupils constantly hid in the school’s bomb shelter during the first months of the full-scale invasion until they were taken to Russia in July 2022.

13. 08. 2024

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, some mothers wrote their children’s names on their backs in case they got lost during the evacuation. Caregivers at the Kherson orphanage also wrote the children’s names on their bodies and clothes before they were forcibly taken to Russia in 2022.

23. 08. 2024

Bomb shelter of of Novopetrivka boarding school, Mykolaiv region. On July 15, 2022, Russian authorities took 15 pupils from the school and put them on a bus to Russia via occupied Crimea.

13. 08. 2024