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There was a time last year when Russia occupied Kherson, a city shelled in southern Ukraine, when Dr. Olah Piliarska thinks that her secret has been discovered and that she and her fellow doctors will be arrested.
They approached.
Fortunately, the scam remains intact. Pilarska and his staff defeated the Russians and bided their time until the city was liberated.
And thanks to his efforts, at least five children at the Kherson Regional Children’s Hospital were saved from being taken to Russia for adoption – through a deliberate campaign by Moscow to seize Ukrainian children orphaned by the war it started.
CBC News has been on the ground about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since its inception. Do you want to know about his experience there? Send an email to ask@cbc.ca. Our reporter will answer your questions as we approach our one-year anniversary.
The open adoption of Ukrainian children by Russian families is an emotionally explosive topic in Ukraine.
Piliarska and her staff falsified the children’s medical records, giving them false medical conditions that made them too sick to be moved from the neonatal ward, let alone hundreds of kilometers east to Russia.
“I’m very scared,” Piliarska told CBC News through an interpreter at the bomb-wounded hospital, which has been hit three times by Russia.
He said he could only assume that Russia wanted the babies to enter the adoption system.
“When the Russians were here, they called me to give me a list of children,” he said.
“They said they wanted children who could be evacuated to Russia. I only have five children like this, in this situation, and I wrote some [reports] who cannot be transported due to their welfare state.”
The story of Pilarska first appeared last fall in the wake of the liberation of Kherson. He sat down this week for a full interview with CBC News, during which he provided new and surprising details about his desperate, months-long struggle to keep the children out of the hands of Russian authorities.
Piliarska confirmed for the first time that four of the five children she abused were not orphans – they had parents they spoke to regularly.
For privacy reasons, Pilarska will not say whether her parents are in Kherson, living in the occupation. He pointed to several people who served in the Ukrainian military.
“We are protecting these children,” he said. “We have children whose parents are fighting. They are saving us from Russia, and we are trying to save their children from Russia.”
Pilarska described how she and two other doctors arranged medical equipment and monitors around the children to trick Russian authorities into thinking they were sicker. Every time soldiers and occupation administrators came to check on the children, he said, the doctors held their breath.
“We’ve put a ventilator next to every child’s bed,” said Pilarska, who has practiced at the children’s hospital for 22 years.
“If [on] the occasion they have been checked by doctors, they will catch us and realize that everything is a lie. But thank God the inspector was not a medical person.
What makes the exercise more precarious is the fact that the hospital’s administration is pro-Russian, Pilarska said.
When Ukrainian troops fought their way into the city last November, the hospital administration fled with the Russians fleeing.
Dr Olena Tishaninova, another doctor who falsified medical records to protect children, said it was a real time for everyone.
“We don’t know what happened,” Tishaninova said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen next, but we can’t do it any other way.
“This is our home. Our children.”
The head of Ukraine’s military administration in Kherson said hundreds of children, mostly orphans, were taken from several shelters in the city.
“The orphanages are all empty,” said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov. “There is an investigation into how it happened and why it happened.”
He said the investigation by prosecutors was complex and that distinguishing those who openly cooperated with Russia in deporting children from those who “had a gun pointed at their heads” had been difficult.
“We cannot judge people until we have all the facts,” Tolokonnikov said.
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