Today is the one-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal, unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To mark the occasion, Kyiv Post has collected 17 stories to try and convey the breadth and scale of the loss caused to Ukrainians caused by the Kremlin’s aggression.

 

A nine-year-old deaf girl from Cherkasy has been missing her white cuddly polar bear for nearly a year since her parents fled Ukraine, following Putin’s full-scale invasion of the country.

 

Her father Yevheny Seletska said they only had time to take a few things with them when they left in May, and the bear was too big to carry.

 

Now living in Doncaster, West Yorkshire, England, the former IT Engineer, said: “My wife got the bear as a present from her brother and then gave it to our daughter when she was born.

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“Even though she has other toys, my daughter who is 90 percent deaf, has grown up with this toy and is very fond of it. She keeps asking for her bear. She misses him a lot.”

 

Her disabled father had an operation on his spine which prevented him from fighting in Ukraine. He said: “I can only console her with the knowledge that when this war is over and if we still have a house, we can go home and she and the bear will be reunited.”

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