The boy in the blue mask
Text by Yevhenia Podobna - for Reporters magazine
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Nine-year-old Romchyk turned out to be stronger than the largest, most furious country with all its missiles. Lviv doctors were not sure whether he would survive the trip abroad. Now, it’s already been two years since he started his recovery and rehabilitation in Germany.
Romchyk searched around looking his mom. After the first explosion, she had shouted to him, “Lie down!” But her words were interrupted by the second explosion. The blast threw him against the wall, and when he opened his eyes, everything was pitch black from smoke and dust, but through this darkness he saw a woman’s long hair among the rubble.
Mom.
Romchyk crawled over and gently, carefully stroked her hair. That’s when he saw the light and knew there was an exit somewhere. He had to save himself. He tried to stand but fell immediately—his right leg wouldn’t respond. So, he began to crawl toward the light. He was weak and had to catch his breath from time to time, sitting on the red-hot pieces of what was a hospital in the center of Vinnytsia just a few minutes earlier. The scorching rubble left deep burns on his body.
Summoning his strength, Romchyk made another attempt for the exit when a stranger scooped him up and ran with him to a car. The boy managed to tell the man his name and address. He remembers the man taking him to the ambulance paramedics, how they poured water on his burned hands, and then being placed on a gurney in the hospital before being wheeled away. And then, darkness enveloped him once more.
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HER HAIR
Yaroslav Oleksiv recalls that September day when he, a bayan player and lecturer of Lviv Musical Academy, came out of his department and encountered an unfamiliar accordionist. There were not enough rooms for everyone, so she had to practice in the hallway. Yaroslav immediately noticed her gorgeous long hair and natural beauty. He soon learned her name, too—Halyna. She had graduated from a music college in Vinnytsia and had come to Lviv to continue her studies. First, they talked for hours about music, then they went for a coffee, and in three years, they tied the knot.
The couple had a son, Romchyk. Upon her graduation, Halyna stayed at the academy as a lecturer, like her husband. When their son grew up, they started teaching him music, of course. Later, the boy took up ballroom and Latin American dancing.
And then, in February, Lviv—which was so far away from the front line just the day before—shook from Russian missiles. When the full-scale war broke out, Halyna’s sister invited her and Romchyk to Poland, but she couldn’t leave her beloved and decided that the family should stay together in such hard times.
That summer, despite the war, the academy began its admission campaign. Like every year, Yaroslav was a member of the admission committee. So, Romchyk and his mother went to visit his grandparents in Vinnytsia. Yaroslav was supposed to join them as soon as the exams were over.
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THE BLACK DAY
His smiling Halia and Romchyk, clutching a blue pencil—he had just received a coloring book at the hospital and was practicing. That was a photo Yaroslav received on July 14, 2022, in the morning.
In the hospital, Romchyk had an encephalogram done. They finished early, and he and his mom arrived at the next hospital, where the encephalogram was to be interpreted, ahead of schedule. The boy remembers how they stopped at a shop, where his mom bought him juice and a snack. Then they went back to the hospital and waited for their appointment sitting on the couch in the hallway, watching TV. He even remembers that on the screen there was a man and a woman preparing to fly somewhere.
Air raid alarms blared in both Lviv and Vinnytsia. The TV fell and broke into pieces after the very first strike.
Yaroslav Oleksiv learned about the Russian strike on Vinnytsia from the internet. He immediately messaged his wife, “How are you there?” But there was no answer. Then Yaroslav called his in-laws, and they told him his wife and son had planned to visit that very clinic in the city center that day. He had never waited so desperately for the “all clear” notification, signaling the end of the air raid alert. He hoped his family had gone to a shelter where there was no signal. But the “all clear” came and went, and no one called him back. His message remained unread. Later that day, Romchyk was found in the intensive care unit of a Vinnytsia hospital.
“I went to Vinnytsia straightaway; Romchyk was lying in the basement—due to continuous alarms, the intensive care unit had been moved there, because severely injured patients cannot be carried to the shelter every time. My son was bandaged all over, I could only see his swollen lips and a little bit of his ear. If I hadn’t been told it was him, it wouldn’t have been possible to recognize my son in such a condition,” says Yaroslav.
![]()
That day, over 200 Vinnytsia residents and visitors were wounded by Russian strikes. Around 50 people were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Romchyk was among the most severely injured: 45% of his body was covered in burns, including his hands, back, legs, and buttocks. He also had severe damage to his respiratory system from smoke inhalation. The chances of survival with such burns are critically low. He also had a shrapnel wound to his head, a fractured left arm and torn muscles in his leg. Vinnytsia doctors performed the first surgery to remove the fragments. And here Romchyk was lucky again, if one can say so under these circumstances: the fragments had pierced his skull but did not reach his brain. Still, the boy’s condition remained critical. Local doctors, despite having done everything possible, acknowledged there were no chances to save the child there. It was crucial to find treatment options abroad as quickly as possible. Eventually, a hospital in Dresden agreed to accept Romchyk. But for him to survive the journey his condition needed to be stabilized, which took time.
On the same day, the tragic news reached the family. Halyna was found.
The family had held on to the hope that she was alive, perhaps unconscious in a hospital among the many injured, and they just hadn’t found her yet. Halyna’s parents and Yarolsav called local hospitals one by one, their hope fading with each call, as all the wounded women had been recognized.
“We came to the morgue. There were a lot of people lying in black bags there, about 30 or so. In one of them was our Halia, but the doctor who had examined her strongly advised us not to look. He gave us some distinctive features to identify her—letters from the remnants of her T-shirt, a metal brace from her braces... it was her. One of the relatives of another deceased insisted on opening the bag. They got sick and had to be taken away by an ambulance,” Yaroslav recalls.
Three days after the strikes in Vinnytsia, two cars headed to Lviv. One of them was the ambulance that took Romchyk to his chance for survival. The other, a bit later, carried his mother on her final journey.
Lviv became Romchyk’s first stop on his way to Dresden. He was taken to the UNBROKEN KIDS, where the doctors continued fighting to stabilize him for the next leg of his journey to Rzeszów, Poland, where a plane to Germany was waiting for the family.
Any delay in their journey could cost the boy his life. He remained in a coma, breathing with the help of a ventilator. The doctors in Vinnytsia gave them two oxygen tanks for the trip, so the driver had to reach the destination before they ran out. During the three days required to stabilize Romchyk’s condition in Lviv, Yaroslav had to bury his wife, but he had no time to mourn his loss.
“I had to collect myself and save my son. I knew his life depended on my decisions. At that point, I felt so bad I didn’t even realize how serious his condition was. I strongly believed in my son, that he would overcome everything and all would be okay,” says Yaroslav. “When we came to Lviv, I asked the doctor, among other things, ‘Will Romchyk be able to play the bayan, as his hands are so severely burnt?’ The doctor was shocked. She didn’t believe we would even be able to get him to the border, let alone get him to the point where he would play the bayan again.”
The road to Rzeszów was much more difficult. When the ambulance carrying Romchyk reached the nearest border checkpoint, it was closed, forcing them to go to another one. The road was rough, the ambulance could not go faster than 20 km/h, or the patient would bounce around inside.
The oxygen was nearly depleted. Nevertheless, at the next checkpoint the ambгlance was allowed through without delay, and one of the drivers, who had a flashing light on his car, offered to escort them to the airport. Lots of small wonders created one great one. Romchyk is alive, despite all the odds.
THE FAIRYTALE FOR THE SON
Hour after hour, his father sat in a chair in the intensive care unit, watching over his motionless Romchyk. Doctors kept coming in to replace the countless medications and drips. Yaroslav read aloud fairy tales for his son. He turned his son’s favorite music on—just as he did at home before bed—and talked to him constantly. He believed that somewhere there, in the darkness, his son could hear him and knew his dad was by his side.
On his fifth night in Dresden, Yaroslav was woken up by a phone call. The doctors asked him to come to the hospital immediately. He couldn’t speak German and didn’t understand what had happened to his son. He ran to the hospital in a panic, only to learn that a few hours after being disconnected from the ventilator, Romchyk had woken up and started calling for his family.
The first thing Romchyk asked when he came out of his coma was, “Have the firefighters and ambulance arrived yet?”
“He was still living in that day. I started to explain to him that a lot of time had passed, and we were far away, in another country. New patients were constantly being brought to the hospital by helicopter, and every time the sounds terrified him. I had to repeat to him, ‘It’s ok, we are far away, you are safe.’ And we didn’t really know whether we should tell him his mom had passed away or wait until he got better. But local psychologists advised us to share the truth immediately. He listened to us but was under such strong medication he appeared to barely understand anything— everything seemed blurred for him.”
For next two weeks, Romchyk woke up every day at dawn and spoke of everything he had gone through on July 14—how he went to the hospital with his mom, about two explosions, how he stroked his mom’s hair under the rubble, and how he got out of the burning room, burning his legs and buttocks on the hot debris. The boy repeated his story every morning, as if he was trying to speak out all the nightmare and pain of that day.
![]()
At first, the German doctors started with the skin grafts—the surgeries were performed three times a week, and in between, they made complicated dressings, so painful they had to be done with anesthesia. Given the extent of the burns, the boy’s skin samples were sent to Berlin, where tissue was to be grown for further transplants.
Soon, the doctors shared the first bad news: his body did not accept the new skin due to an infection, and the antibiotics weren’t working. Also, they couldn’t do anything about his fever—occasionally they managed to bring it down below 40°C, but only briefly. Then came the second blow: the skin samples sent to Berlin were also infected, making it impossible to grow the skin out of them. Still, the doctors didn’t give up. They tried new medications until they found one that worked. In just a month, they managed to control the fever and fight the infection. New surgeries started.
Among the mountain of paperwork Yaroslav had to sign at the hospital — acknowledgments, consents, permissions— one day he was presented with a surgical consent form: it turned out that the leg injury was more serious than it seemed at first, the damaged muscle had to be removed, and the doctors were not sure whether Romchyk would be able to walk again. In fact, for the first three months, the boy was kept sedated, having gone through 27 surgeries in that time. The last one was a skin graft on the back of his head.
HIS STEPS
“When he was more or less conscious, I knew I had to get him interested in something to motivate him to fight. We decided he had to study. I got his assignments from his Ukrainian school; we would play the video files sent by his teacher on the TV in the ward and do math and reading for at least half an hour a day. Later, a teacher from a German school started coming—they have obligatory education even in the hospital. After his hospital stay, we were sent to the rehabilitation center near Dresden.”
After a few motionless months, Romchyk had to learn to control his body once again. His first attempts to work his muscles and learn to roll onto his sides had to be done with painkillers. Overcoming the pain, the boy learned to move his injured leg to the side. At first, he moved it just a few centimeters, gradually raising the amplitude. Finally, the moment came when Romchyk took his first few steps around the ward. That day was the happiest day for his family.
Every day, Romchyk pushed himself to walk farther— first three, then five steps, then a couple of meters. In three weeks, despite the doctor’s concerns, he walked steadily for half a kilometer, without any rest. By the time he was discharged, he and his father were walking five kilometers a day. Yaroslav constantly looked for new activities for his son to keep him curious and help his body recover. That’s how they started playing table tennis.
“It is important to motivate him constantly. I told him, ‘If you want to play the bayan again, we must work out your fingers. The sooner we finish the treatment, the sooner we will go home.’ When we put a specific aim before Romchyk, he was very persistent in his pursuit of it, and he eventually succeeded.”
During rehabilitation, Romchyk began wearing the blue mask, which covered his entire face except for his eyes, nose and mouth, along with knee-highs and mittens made of special compression fabric. He must wear them for two years to prevent scarring.
![]()
THE BOY KEEPS GOING
In July 2024, the boy in the blue mask stood in the center of Vinnytsia with a bouquet of red roses in his hands. He was eager to come here—to the place where he had spent his last day with his mom. To the place where three Russian missiles had taken the lives of 29 people and left hundreds more shattered. Now, near the clinic, a small memorial stands—pigeons with yellow and blue ribbons and portraits of the deceased. One of the pigeons bears the image of his mother—a very beautiful woman with a gorgeous braid, and an inscription: Halyna Oleksiv, 29, PhD, teacher, musician. He brought flowers for her.
A nine-year-old boy turned out to be stronger than the largest, most furious country with all its missiles. He won this war, no doubt. During these two years, contrary to medical textbooks and doctors’ predictions, Romchyk learned to walk and run, and much more. Although he still can’t lift his foot on his own, that hasn’t stopped him from returning to dance and even performing with his partner at the most prestigious dance competitions in the UK.
When he comes to Lviv, he continues his rehabilitation in the same place where his life was saved in the summer of 2022, at UNBROKEN KIDS. One day, he will surely play the bayan in front of the doctors.
Despite all his successes, his work on himself never stops. He still does special exercises all the time and works out in the pool. In autumn, another milestone awaits him—a hair transplant and then plastic surgery. Because of this, he won’t be attending school in Ukraine this year. In two years, he has learned German and not only speaks it fluently, but also helps his father with translations at appointments and consultations with doctors. However, Romchyk admits he would very much like to go home to Ukraine, to his room, to his grandparents.
Over these two years, he was the subject of dozens of stories and articles throughout the world, and a French director even made a documentary about him. Neither Yaroslav nor Romchyk refuse to speak to journalists, as they hope their story will inspire and support those experiencing hard times now. When we speak to the boy via a video call, he smiles. As if the two years of pain, 33 surgeries and so many challenges had never happened. He speaks so reasonably you forget there is a nine-year-old child in front of you. A child is unbelievably strong.
![]()
“I do not experience any hardships,” says the boy in the blue mask on the other side of the screen, very seriously. “You just must be patient and know that if it is hard today, then tomorrow it will be better.”
Text by Yevhenia Podobna - for Reporters magazine
Nine-year-old Romchyk turned out to be stronger than the largest, most furious country with all its missiles. Lviv doctors were not sure whether he would survive the trip abroad. Now, it’s already been two years since he started his recovery and rehabilitation in Germany.
Romchyk searched around looking his mom. After the first explosion, she had shouted to him, “Lie down!” But her words were interrupted by the second explosion. The blast threw him against the wall, and when he opened his eyes, everything was pitch black from smoke and dust, but through this darkness he saw a woman’s long hair among the rubble.
Mom.
Romchyk crawled over and gently, carefully stroked her hair. That’s when he saw the light and knew there was an exit somewhere. He had to save himself. He tried to stand but fell immediately—his right leg wouldn’t respond. So, he began to crawl toward the light. He was weak and had to catch his breath from time to time, sitting on the red-hot pieces of what was a hospital in the center of Vinnytsia just a few minutes earlier. The scorching rubble left deep burns on his body.
Summoning his strength, Romchyk made another attempt for the exit when a stranger scooped him up and ran with him to a car. The boy managed to tell the man his name and address. He remembers the man taking him to the ambulance paramedics, how they poured water on his burned hands, and then being placed on a gurney in the hospital before being wheeled away. And then, darkness enveloped him once more.
HER HAIR
Yaroslav Oleksiv recalls that September day when he, a bayan player and lecturer of Lviv Musical Academy, came out of his department and encountered an unfamiliar accordionist. There were not enough rooms for everyone, so she had to practice in the hallway. Yaroslav immediately noticed her gorgeous long hair and natural beauty. He soon learned her name, too—Halyna. She had graduated from a music college in Vinnytsia and had come to Lviv to continue her studies. First, they talked for hours about music, then they went for a coffee, and in three years, they tied the knot.
The couple had a son, Romchyk. Upon her graduation, Halyna stayed at the academy as a lecturer, like her husband. When their son grew up, they started teaching him music, of course. Later, the boy took up ballroom and Latin American dancing.
And then, in February, Lviv—which was so far away from the front line just the day before—shook from Russian missiles. When the full-scale war broke out, Halyna’s sister invited her and Romchyk to Poland, but she couldn’t leave her beloved and decided that the family should stay together in such hard times.
That summer, despite the war, the academy began its admission campaign. Like every year, Yaroslav was a member of the admission committee. So, Romchyk and his mother went to visit his grandparents in Vinnytsia. Yaroslav was supposed to join them as soon as the exams were over.
THE BLACK DAY
His smiling Halia and Romchyk, clutching a blue pencil—he had just received a coloring book at the hospital and was practicing. That was a photo Yaroslav received on July 14, 2022, in the morning.
In the hospital, Romchyk had an encephalogram done. They finished early, and he and his mom arrived at the next hospital, where the encephalogram was to be interpreted, ahead of schedule. The boy remembers how they stopped at a shop, where his mom bought him juice and a snack. Then they went back to the hospital and waited for their appointment sitting on the couch in the hallway, watching TV. He even remembers that on the screen there was a man and a woman preparing to fly somewhere.
Air raid alarms blared in both Lviv and Vinnytsia. The TV fell and broke into pieces after the very first strike.
Yaroslav Oleksiv learned about the Russian strike on Vinnytsia from the internet. He immediately messaged his wife, “How are you there?” But there was no answer. Then Yaroslav called his in-laws, and they told him his wife and son had planned to visit that very clinic in the city center that day. He had never waited so desperately for the “all clear” notification, signaling the end of the air raid alert. He hoped his family had gone to a shelter where there was no signal. But the “all clear” came and went, and no one called him back. His message remained unread. Later that day, Romchyk was found in the intensive care unit of a Vinnytsia hospital.
“I went to Vinnytsia straightaway; Romchyk was lying in the basement—due to continuous alarms, the intensive care unit had been moved there, because severely injured patients cannot be carried to the shelter every time. My son was bandaged all over, I could only see his swollen lips and a little bit of his ear. If I hadn’t been told it was him, it wouldn’t have been possible to recognize my son in such a condition,” says Yaroslav.
That day, over 200 Vinnytsia residents and visitors were wounded by Russian strikes. Around 50 people were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Romchyk was among the most severely injured: 45% of his body was covered in burns, including his hands, back, legs, and buttocks. He also had severe damage to his respiratory system from smoke inhalation. The chances of survival with such burns are critically low. He also had a shrapnel wound to his head, a fractured left arm and torn muscles in his leg. Vinnytsia doctors performed the first surgery to remove the fragments. And here Romchyk was lucky again, if one can say so under these circumstances: the fragments had pierced his skull but did not reach his brain. Still, the boy’s condition remained critical. Local doctors, despite having done everything possible, acknowledged there were no chances to save the child there. It was crucial to find treatment options abroad as quickly as possible. Eventually, a hospital in Dresden agreed to accept Romchyk. But for him to survive the journey his condition needed to be stabilized, which took time.
On the same day, the tragic news reached the family. Halyna was found.
The family had held on to the hope that she was alive, perhaps unconscious in a hospital among the many injured, and they just hadn’t found her yet. Halyna’s parents and Yarolsav called local hospitals one by one, their hope fading with each call, as all the wounded women had been recognized.
“We came to the morgue. There were a lot of people lying in black bags there, about 30 or so. In one of them was our Halia, but the doctor who had examined her strongly advised us not to look. He gave us some distinctive features to identify her—letters from the remnants of her T-shirt, a metal brace from her braces... it was her. One of the relatives of another deceased insisted on opening the bag. They got sick and had to be taken away by an ambulance,” Yaroslav recalls.
Three days after the strikes in Vinnytsia, two cars headed to Lviv. One of them was the ambulance that took Romchyk to his chance for survival. The other, a bit later, carried his mother on her final journey.
Lviv became Romchyk’s first stop on his way to Dresden. He was taken to the UNBROKEN KIDS, where the doctors continued fighting to stabilize him for the next leg of his journey to Rzeszów, Poland, where a plane to Germany was waiting for the family.
Any delay in their journey could cost the boy his life. He remained in a coma, breathing with the help of a ventilator. The doctors in Vinnytsia gave them two oxygen tanks for the trip, so the driver had to reach the destination before they ran out. During the three days required to stabilize Romchyk’s condition in Lviv, Yaroslav had to bury his wife, but he had no time to mourn his loss.
“I had to collect myself and save my son. I knew his life depended on my decisions. At that point, I felt so bad I didn’t even realize how serious his condition was. I strongly believed in my son, that he would overcome everything and all would be okay,” says Yaroslav. “When we came to Lviv, I asked the doctor, among other things, ‘Will Romchyk be able to play the bayan, as his hands are so severely burnt?’ The doctor was shocked. She didn’t believe we would even be able to get him to the border, let alone get him to the point where he would play the bayan again.”
The road to Rzeszów was much more difficult. When the ambulance carrying Romchyk reached the nearest border checkpoint, it was closed, forcing them to go to another one. The road was rough, the ambulance could not go faster than 20 km/h, or the patient would bounce around inside.
The oxygen was nearly depleted. Nevertheless, at the next checkpoint the ambгlance was allowed through without delay, and one of the drivers, who had a flashing light on his car, offered to escort them to the airport. Lots of small wonders created one great one. Romchyk is alive, despite all the odds.
THE FAIRYTALE FOR THE SON
Hour after hour, his father sat in a chair in the intensive care unit, watching over his motionless Romchyk. Doctors kept coming in to replace the countless medications and drips. Yaroslav read aloud fairy tales for his son. He turned his son’s favorite music on—just as he did at home before bed—and talked to him constantly. He believed that somewhere there, in the darkness, his son could hear him and knew his dad was by his side.
On his fifth night in Dresden, Yaroslav was woken up by a phone call. The doctors asked him to come to the hospital immediately. He couldn’t speak German and didn’t understand what had happened to his son. He ran to the hospital in a panic, only to learn that a few hours after being disconnected from the ventilator, Romchyk had woken up and started calling for his family.
The first thing Romchyk asked when he came out of his coma was, “Have the firefighters and ambulance arrived yet?”
“He was still living in that day. I started to explain to him that a lot of time had passed, and we were far away, in another country. New patients were constantly being brought to the hospital by helicopter, and every time the sounds terrified him. I had to repeat to him, ‘It’s ok, we are far away, you are safe.’ And we didn’t really know whether we should tell him his mom had passed away or wait until he got better. But local psychologists advised us to share the truth immediately. He listened to us but was under such strong medication he appeared to barely understand anything— everything seemed blurred for him.”
For next two weeks, Romchyk woke up every day at dawn and spoke of everything he had gone through on July 14—how he went to the hospital with his mom, about two explosions, how he stroked his mom’s hair under the rubble, and how he got out of the burning room, burning his legs and buttocks on the hot debris. The boy repeated his story every morning, as if he was trying to speak out all the nightmare and pain of that day.
At first, the German doctors started with the skin grafts—the surgeries were performed three times a week, and in between, they made complicated dressings, so painful they had to be done with anesthesia. Given the extent of the burns, the boy’s skin samples were sent to Berlin, where tissue was to be grown for further transplants.
Soon, the doctors shared the first bad news: his body did not accept the new skin due to an infection, and the antibiotics weren’t working. Also, they couldn’t do anything about his fever—occasionally they managed to bring it down below 40°C, but only briefly. Then came the second blow: the skin samples sent to Berlin were also infected, making it impossible to grow the skin out of them. Still, the doctors didn’t give up. They tried new medications until they found one that worked. In just a month, they managed to control the fever and fight the infection. New surgeries started.
Among the mountain of paperwork Yaroslav had to sign at the hospital — acknowledgments, consents, permissions— one day he was presented with a surgical consent form: it turned out that the leg injury was more serious than it seemed at first, the damaged muscle had to be removed, and the doctors were not sure whether Romchyk would be able to walk again. In fact, for the first three months, the boy was kept sedated, having gone through 27 surgeries in that time. The last one was a skin graft on the back of his head.
HIS STEPS
“When he was more or less conscious, I knew I had to get him interested in something to motivate him to fight. We decided he had to study. I got his assignments from his Ukrainian school; we would play the video files sent by his teacher on the TV in the ward and do math and reading for at least half an hour a day. Later, a teacher from a German school started coming—they have obligatory education even in the hospital. After his hospital stay, we were sent to the rehabilitation center near Dresden.”
After a few motionless months, Romchyk had to learn to control his body once again. His first attempts to work his muscles and learn to roll onto his sides had to be done with painkillers. Overcoming the pain, the boy learned to move his injured leg to the side. At first, he moved it just a few centimeters, gradually raising the amplitude. Finally, the moment came when Romchyk took his first few steps around the ward. That day was the happiest day for his family.
Every day, Romchyk pushed himself to walk farther— first three, then five steps, then a couple of meters. In three weeks, despite the doctor’s concerns, he walked steadily for half a kilometer, without any rest. By the time he was discharged, he and his father were walking five kilometers a day. Yaroslav constantly looked for new activities for his son to keep him curious and help his body recover. That’s how they started playing table tennis.
“It is important to motivate him constantly. I told him, ‘If you want to play the bayan again, we must work out your fingers. The sooner we finish the treatment, the sooner we will go home.’ When we put a specific aim before Romchyk, he was very persistent in his pursuit of it, and he eventually succeeded.”
During rehabilitation, Romchyk began wearing the blue mask, which covered his entire face except for his eyes, nose and mouth, along with knee-highs and mittens made of special compression fabric. He must wear them for two years to prevent scarring.
THE BOY KEEPS GOING
In July 2024, the boy in the blue mask stood in the center of Vinnytsia with a bouquet of red roses in his hands. He was eager to come here—to the place where he had spent his last day with his mom. To the place where three Russian missiles had taken the lives of 29 people and left hundreds more shattered. Now, near the clinic, a small memorial stands—pigeons with yellow and blue ribbons and portraits of the deceased. One of the pigeons bears the image of his mother—a very beautiful woman with a gorgeous braid, and an inscription: Halyna Oleksiv, 29, PhD, teacher, musician. He brought flowers for her.
A nine-year-old boy turned out to be stronger than the largest, most furious country with all its missiles. He won this war, no doubt. During these two years, contrary to medical textbooks and doctors’ predictions, Romchyk learned to walk and run, and much more. Although he still can’t lift his foot on his own, that hasn’t stopped him from returning to dance and even performing with his partner at the most prestigious dance competitions in the UK.
When he comes to Lviv, he continues his rehabilitation in the same place where his life was saved in the summer of 2022, at UNBROKEN KIDS. One day, he will surely play the bayan in front of the doctors.
Despite all his successes, his work on himself never stops. He still does special exercises all the time and works out in the pool. In autumn, another milestone awaits him—a hair transplant and then plastic surgery. Because of this, he won’t be attending school in Ukraine this year. In two years, he has learned German and not only speaks it fluently, but also helps his father with translations at appointments and consultations with doctors. However, Romchyk admits he would very much like to go home to Ukraine, to his room, to his grandparents.
Over these two years, he was the subject of dozens of stories and articles throughout the world, and a French director even made a documentary about him. Neither Yaroslav nor Romchyk refuse to speak to journalists, as they hope their story will inspire and support those experiencing hard times now. When we speak to the boy via a video call, he smiles. As if the two years of pain, 33 surgeries and so many challenges had never happened. He speaks so reasonably you forget there is a nine-year-old child in front of you. A child is unbelievably strong.
“I do not experience any hardships,” says the boy in the blue mask on the other side of the screen, very seriously. “You just must be patient and know that if it is hard today, then tomorrow it will be better.”