A Ukrainian father makes a desperate, last-gasp dash to Moscow to stop his children being adopted by a Russian family. An orphaned 12-year-old girl lies in a hospital bed with shrapnel wounds, hoping her grandfather can find her in Russian-occupied Donetsk. A Ukrainian teenager asks “who am I?” after being brainwashed in Russian captivity.
These stories and others like them are the inspiration for a series of songs that Canadian-Ukrainian singer Marichka Marczyk and 19-year-old Liza Praslova, who was forcibly taken from Mariupol to Russia in 2022, are performing on an international tour starting in London on January 27.
“People don’t know what war means,” Marczyk told RFE/RL. “It’s not two sides that are just fighting each other. It’s one side who came to Ukraine and is doing all these horrible crimes, including stealing thousands of Ukrainian kids from occupied territories.”
Russia has kidnapped or forcibly displaced nearly 20,000 minors during its nearly 4-year full-scale invasion, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s children’s commissioner.
Marczyk, a well-known singer who has performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York and the Barbican Center in London, said she was now dedicating her life to the children’s cause.
One of her songs, Remember, I Believe in You, was inspired by a report by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, which was also part of a wider RFE/RL investigation about abducted children in 2023.
It focuses on the story of Yevhen Mezhevoy, whose son and two daughters were taken from him after Russian forces occupied Mariupol in 2022. After he made contact with them, his son told him they would be adopted within five days unless he came to Moscow to get them.
“It was one of the most powerful stories,” Marczyk said, adding that she hopes to meet them for the first time when she visits the Baltic states, where they now live, in April.
Marczyk says she prefers not to bother families with emails and phone calls while writing her songs, respecting their need for space and healing.
Many have already had media exposure. Another song, The Riddle, was inspired by the story of Kira Obedynska. Also from Mariupol, she was 12 years old when Russian forces attacked her city.
After witnessing her father getting shot dead on the balcony of their apartment, she was trying to flee Mariupol when she was injured by a landmine explosion.
As she lay for a month in a hospital in Donetsk, her grandfather made a long and difficult journey: flying from Poland to Turkey, then on to Moscow, then overland into Russian-occupied Ukraine passing through numerous checkpoints and interrogations.
“She almost lost hope that he can come and save her,” said Marczyk. “I know she was in a pretty bad condition when they met. And even now, she is still going through recovery.”
Obedynska, whose mother died when she was a baby, is now living in Uzhhorod, in western Ukraine, with her grandparents.
“In my song, the grandfather tells her riddles to remind her that she's very loved, she has her home, and everybody is waiting for her,” said Marczyk.
Another song, entitled 4.5.0., is a message of hope from a mother to her stolen child that they will be reunited. Marczyk said audiences were often in tears during performances.
“It’s a very deep response,” she said. “You know, the feeling of a mother losing a child…it’s all about humanity.”
A Diary Of War
Marczyk is constantly looking for new stories to inspire more songs. It was while doing so that she met Liza Praslova, who has her own story of surviving war and detention that was captured in a diary she kept.
Aged 15, Praslova was singing in a band with friends in Mariupol. On February 21, 2022, she noted excitedly that “our band may be invited to perform on TV!”
Three days later, she recalled being woken by explosions at 4 a.m. as Russia began its full-scale invasion. “My balcony windows were blown out by a sound wave” she told RFE/RL in a recent interview.
Later diary entries describe life under Russian bombardment. In March, she wrote “I think my boyfriend is dead” and described fleeing the city, “my guitar on my back.”
Praslova said Russian soldiers were separating children from their parents at a checkpoint, but she resisted this with the aid of a neighbor who “flirted” with them. Later, at a filtration camp, she said that male soldiers tried to strip search her to see if she had Nazi tattoos -- but she insisted they find a female colleague.
Her family were taken in by her mother’s sister living in Russia but found their relatives did not believe their accounts of enduring Russian bombardment in Mariupol.
When they eventually decided to leave Russia, the relatives told them “you're not our family anymore,” Praslova said.
Praslova is now living in Stuttgart, Germany, while studying marketing remotely at Kyiv University. Her boyfriend was not dead, after all, and the couple are still together.
She recently received a visa to visit Britain and will perform alongside Marczyk at the London concert.
After London, tour continues with gigs in Scotland, Vancouver, and the WOMAdelaide festival in Australia before concluding at The Hague in April.
That final date has special significance. The Hague is home to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, a Russian children's rights official who allegedly directs the removal of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Marczyk said the concert would be special.
“I really, really visualize Putin and Lvova-Belova being there and being [held] responsible for all the crimes they did. So, for me, it's very important to be in this place, to be there with Liza, and to do a show particularly there in The Hague,” she said.
Marczyk added that she still had hope that she would see Putin in the dock in The Hague. Praslova did not share her optimism, however.
“The thing that he is scared of most is to be punished. And I think he would find a way to not be punished,” she said.
