Five-year-old David, along with his pregnant mother, lived in an uninhabitable basement of a burned out house in Mariupol for two months to survive the occupation. He never cried, except during one instance when occupying soldiers entered the basement and started shooting indiscriminately in order to intimidate those who were hiding.
David’s father, a sergeant in the Armed Forces of Ukraine died during a military operation, defending his homeland. Meanwhile, David and his mother evacuated Mariupol through the humanitarian corridor. Currently, the family lives in western Ukraine – and David’s new sister will never get to meet her heroic father.