Ukrainians find a Russian priest ready to help them rebuild their shattered lives

When Russian troops entered Ukraine, Shishkina was resting in a maternity hospital in Mariupol while a long-awaited baby grew inside her. A previous pregnancy was lost at 21 weeks, she told CNN, and it had been difficult for her and her husband to conceive again. She remembers being in a quiet ward full of women approaching their due date when a deadly bomb hit the hospital.

“It was so loud your ears were ringing and drowning out everything else,” Shishkina said. “Everything was falling apart out of nowhere.”

On March 9, Mariupol No. 3 Maternity Hospital was bombed in a now infamous incident that killed four people and injured dozens more. Ukrainian authorities have accused Russian forces of dropping bombs on it from the air. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed the bombed hospital was being used by Ukrainian troops and all patients and nurses had left. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman denied in a briefing that Russia had bombed the maternity ward, calling it a “provocation”.

For Shishkina, caught in a violent and brutal conflict, everything changed.

She knew she had to scream, she said, in hopes of being found in the wreckage and rescued. Shishkina was pulled from the rubble and rushed to another hospital where doctors were able to save her life. But not that of his unborn son.

“They did a caesarean section. There was panic everywhere, but they said they had to save me. They saw that the child had no more vital signs. They tried to take him out and resuscitate him,” Shishkina said.

“Whoever caused this explosion, I got a direct hit in the stomach – down to my baby – and they couldn’t save him,” she told CNN, keeping her voice high even. as tears welled up in his eyes.

When she was in better health, she tried to send messages to her family, not knowing if she was still in Mariupol, or even alive.

She learned that some of her relatives had left. But her husband, Vladimir Shishkin, was not with them.

He was injured the day after the hospital bombing and ended up being treated nearly 112 km away in Donetsk. The city, located in the far east of Ukraine, has been an area ruled by separatists backed by Russia since 2014 and a Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had recognized its independence in the days before the conflict.

Shishkin, 31, told CNN he went to the only store open locally before heading to his injured wife, when he and a friend named Tolik were caught in an airstrike.

“We ran hearing the plane getting louder,” he said, crutches leaning beside him. “There was a hill, with a fence and a big house. Like everyone around us, we jumped over the fence. I shouted ‘Tolik, Tolik’, but he was already dead. He didn’t couldn’t say anything.”

Shishkin said a stranger heard his cries for help and carried him in a wheelbarrow to take him to the road and then into a car which took him to hospital. His condition deteriorated and he was transferred to another hospital in the Donetsk region where his leg was amputated.

He reached out to the couple on social media when he saw Shishkina posting messages asking for help. He arranged for them to travel to St. Petersburg and paid for housing, medical care, and their needs.

Mikhnov-Vaytenko believes he and his network of volunteers have helped thousands of Ukrainian refugees since the conflict began, from paying for travel and accommodation for refugees to receiving medical treatment and information on where they can go and what they are entitled to in Russia, often with a kind word or a prayer.

“What we can do, just for a few moments, (is) just take your hand, just look at your eyes, just smile and say, ‘It’ll be fine, now you’re saved,'” the priest told CNN. in his church: a single bare room in a former factory in St. Petersburg. “So hopefully with God’s help, from a certain period of time, it will be in the past.”

Ukrainians arriving in Russia receive accommodation in a refugee center and 10,000 rubles (about $175) as well as a one-year residence permit.

With most Ukrainians, especially from the east, fluent in Russian, Mikhnov-Vaytenko says it’s a pretty easy transition. He says many refugees say they don’t want to go to Europe initially, because they can’t speak different languages.

Mikhnov-Vaytenko relies on donations to help pay for his work with refugees, including moving many refugees to the EU. He said the money came from Russian hospitals, companies, businessmen and ordinary citizens.

Mikhnov-Vaytenko isn’t shy about sharing the limitations of aid available in Russia and helping Ukrainians move on if they so choose.

“People who come to Russia have no information. What they can do, where they can go, what is allowed,” he told CNN.

And for now, he does not encounter any official obstacles to his work. “I don’t see them, and they don’t see me,” he said of Russian authorities.

Mikhnov-Vaytenko quit the Russian Orthodox Church in 2014 after a deadly battle in eastern Ukraine and the Church and Moscow’s support for pro-Russian separatists.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, is a staunch ally of Putin and a supporter of what the Russian government calls “the special military operation” in Ukraine.

“Now it’s basically a military church in Russia. We don’t have Orthodox Christians, we have military Christians,” Mikhnov-Vaytenko said.

Even with tough new laws in place, Mikhnov-Vaytenko bravely says he’s not afraid to speak out about his opposition to Russia’s actions in Ukraine — he fears only God.

“I was born and raised in a dissident family,” he said, “so there’s nothing to worry about.”

As for the young couple, Mikhnov-Vaytenko ensured that they had the chance to start a new life, guaranteeing them tickets to Germany and accommodation. Shishkin should also be fitted with a prosthetic limb at a specialist hospital in Bavaria.

As Mikhnov-Vaytenko loaded the couple’s luggage into a car, Shishkina said they were nervous but excited. Already she seems lighter, happier.

“Fear? Maybe fear of the unknown…but our expectations are positive, we know everything will be fine,” she said.