Ukraine: How this woman’s trip from her grandmother’s house changed her life forever
In May last year, we stood in the grounds of what had been a mass grave of the residents of Bucha – just a month after the city was liberated from invading Russian forces.
Tetiana Sichkar, then just 20 years old, told us how the occupation had affected her life in the most unimaginable way.
Today, she takes us to the edge of a forest where a war crime devastated her life.
On 24 March last year, Tetiana and her 46-year-old mother, also called Tetiana, made the short trip home from her grandmother’s house – the only place with a working gas stove and a wood fire – through the woods along a railway line.
They wore white tape on their arms to signify to the Russian troops they were civilians. They were not a threat.
Unbeknownst to anyone, in just seven days, Bucha would be free again.
But as the two Tetianas walked that Thursday a loud crack pierced the quiet between the trees.
“Suddenly I heard a very loud gunshot,” the young woman says.
“Then I saw something, maybe blood, maybe a bullet.”
She remembers telling everyone to get down, and falling to the ground. Shaking her mother’s leg, there was no response.
“There was blood everywhere. Her eyes were still open and she was just staring. And I started to scream. I screamed for maybe five minutes.”
Does she know where the shot came from? Tetiana is not sure.
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Powerful images from the last year
She gestures to her right, through the thickest part of the forest.
“My father believes it was over here, because that is where the Russians were.”
She points to a white building ahead and says calmly: “The sniper was on the second floor there.”
Staring at the upstairs window it is hard to believe Tetiana’s composure while rooted to the spot of such a tragedy.
A short distance away, we are led to the grave of her mother.
Tetiana Sichkar at the grave of her mother
She says the funeral arrangements were a blur.
Before the Russians were pushed out of Bucha, they gave her mother’s body back in a stolen car and she was buried first in her garden, before a rush of ceremonies took place at a cemetery when it was safe again.
There are hundreds of graves with less than a foot between them – the site has been the final resting place for so many long before the Russian invasion.
A map of the conflict on the one-year anniversary
Tetiana, now 21, shows us a picture of her and her mum, the most important woman in her life.
“Of course, I miss her most because she was the closest one to me,” she says – her life must be so hard now. “Life is hard. But it goes on.”
She is studying computer programming from her flat in another part of Bucha, but takes trips into Kyiv to meet the woman who is helping her fight for justice.
Tetiana pictured with human rights lawyer, Oksana Mykhalevych
Oksana Mykhalevych, 36, is a lawyer who has been prosecuting human rights abuses since the Maidan Uprising in 2014, when 100 activists and 13 police officers were killed during demonstrations against then-president Viktor Yanukovych.
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She has pages of documents neatly sorted in plastic sleeves in a bright red folder, and will help Tetiana liaise with the official war crimes investigators who have been given support from legal systems around the world, including the UK.
Oksana outlines that they want Ukrainian police to stage a reconstruction next month to at least establish exactly where that fatal shot came from – so they can perhaps identify the Russian military unit involved.
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They will then go after the commanders. “Someone should take responsibility,” she tells us.
Tetiana admits that the Russian military personnel who occupied Bucha may have been sent to another battlefront in the country and may have met their fate at the hands of Ukrainian soldiers.
“It is very likely that that person is already dead. But if that person is still alive, I believe that I will see him in a court. And maybe I’ll ask him what made him do that to my family”.
The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.
Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.
We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.
It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.
Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.
We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.
David Lammy and Norway’s Foreign Minister Barth Eide view the melting Blomstrandbreen glacier. Pic: PA
The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.
“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”
In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.
The foreign secretary visiting SvalSat, a satellite ground station which monitors climate in Svalbard. Pic: PA
Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.
“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.
But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.
Norwegian observers are concerned about the Russian leader – and Trump being ‘too soft’ on him. Pic: AP
Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”
Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.
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In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.
There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.
“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”
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This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.
Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.
World
‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment
A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.
Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing
The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.
“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.
He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.
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Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.
Children are among the bulk of the casualties in Gaza
“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.
“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.
“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”
Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.
They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.
Dr Victoria Rose is a British surgeon working in southern Gaza’s last remaining hospital
Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.
“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.
“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”
One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.
Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.
“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”
Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”
Hatem Senior
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The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.
He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.
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Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”
Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.
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