Some Ukrainian soldiers are freezing sperm to make heirs

Aware that he could die at any moment, the 29-year-old decided to try cryopressure process of freezing sperm or eggs, which some Ukrainian soldiers are addressing as they face the possibility of never returning home.

“It's not scary to die, but it's scary when you don't leave anyone behind”, said Khroniuuk, who had quickly joined war efforts, without thinking about his future, when Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago, traces Periscope.

During a holiday home in January, he and his partner went to a private clinic in Kiev, IVMED, which is giving up the $55 cost of troop creation. The clinic has had about 100 soldiers to freeze sperm since the invasion, says its head, Halyna Stralko.

Assisted conception services to get pregnant currently cost 800 to $3,500.

We don't know how to help otherwise. We can have children or help create them. We don't have weapons, we can't fight, but what we do is also important”, said Strelko, whose clinic had to be closed during the first months of the war after Kiev was under attack, but reopened after the Russian army withdrew from the area.

When Khronick told his partner Anna Sokurenko, 24, what she wanted to do, she was initially not sure.

“It was very painful to realize that there was an opportunity for him not to return,” Sokurenko said, adding that it took a night of reflection to agree on.

She and Kroniu spoke of the Associated Press as they sat in the clinic, where smiling babies' posters hang in the corridor, including one writing: “Your future is safely protected”. The clinic's laboratory has its own supply of electrical power that enters during frequent disruptions from Russian missile attacks that damage electricity infrastructure.

Dr. Strelko, who has been in the fertility business since 1998, said the service she offers soldiers is especially important now, pointing to a very aggressive part of this massive loss”.

Russian forces have postponed their progress in the eastern town of Bakhmu with grants and serious attacks believed to have produced massive troop losses for both Ukraine and Russia. Neither side says how many have died.

Sokurenko and Khroniuuk were married several days after their visit to the clinic, and he is now fighting in the Chernihiv region near the border. She believes that a chance to have a child, even after a partner is killed in the war, can ease the deep pain of loss.

I think it's a very important opportunity in the future if a woman loses her boyfriend,” she said. I understand that it will be difficult to recover from this, but it will mean that we continue to fight, keep living. ”

Natalia Kyrkach-Antonenko, 37-year-old, became pregnant as she visited her husband in a first-line town several months before he was killed in battle. Her husband, Vitaly, came home to Kiev for a 10-day break before his death in November and received an ultrasound of his unborn daughter. He also visited a fertility clinic to freeze his sperm.

Kerkach-Antonenko hopes that eventually there will be another child using that sperm. She said that the ability to have the children of her late husband “is an extraordinary support”.

We have loved each other extremely hard for 18 years,” she said.

It also views creativity as a struggle for the future of the country.

Their father did everything possible to realize this future. Now it is our turn, as women, to fight for the future of Ukraine, raising people with dignity. People who can continue to change the country for the better”, she said.

Another couple who went to the IVMED clinic in December, Oles and Iryna, requested that only their names be used because of privacy concerns.

Oles is in the Donnetsk region, where some cities became the landscapes of hell because of fierce battles over the past few months and see creation as a guarantee.

Iryna spends her nights alone in their apartment on the outskirts of Kiev, wavering amid anxiety about her husband as he fights in the most intense and deadly part of the Eastern front line and numerous visits to the clinic where she is trying to remain pregnant.

It's a difficult life, with worries, bombings, constant anxiety for relatives. But at the same time, it's what's”, she says. It's better to be a parent now than to push it until you don't have kids. ”

“Family is what will keep our country and children are our future”, she said. “We fight for them.”/Periscopi/