Five-month-old Alisa coos on the cushioned floor. She had been born only days after her 35-year-old mother Tetiana Chehubda arrived at the centre for battered women in Dnipro, a large city in eastern Ukraine.
Now divorced, Tetiana’s ex-husband is a soldier fighting against the Russian invasion.
She doesn’t like to talk about him, fearing she will be publicly disgraced for any perceived insult to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
“He was a horrible man,” she tells EUobserver in English on Thursday (2 April). Her eldest, 11-year-old Anna, sits quietly by her side. Anna, who dreams of becoming an actress, loves to read detective and fantasy novels.
The family had been evacuated from Krymina during the outset of the war and then temporarily relocated to Pavlohrad, a small city some 50km from the frontline.
Tetiana wants to leave Ukraine and find somewhere safe for her children, away from the fighting and the violence of her ex-husband.
Domestic abuse has emerged as a nationwide problem in Ukraine, with reports suggesting that some battle-weary soldiers are bringing wartime trauma into their family lives.
At “Mama’s Happiness” shelter run by Manya Zemenkova, Tetiana lives alongside 13 other families, including 24 children.
Zemenkova warns that children are often the first victims of domestic violence and fears the situation will worsen as the war continues.
“This is a huge problem across Ukraine, and it will only grow as more soldiers return home,” she says.
“Once we start the fight, we have to keep going. Don’t back down. I tell everyone: don’t back down,” says Manya Zemenkova, who runs the centre. Note – portions of image have been blurred to conceal location. (Photo: Nikolaj Nielsen)
According to Zemenkova, the Ukrainian government is working to address the issue by supporting regional initiatives so that other similar shelters can offer refuge to abused women and their children.
She also says local police have specialised units that have been trained and sensitised to handle such cases.
In the first five months of 2025, police received more than 53,000 reports of criminal offences linked to domestic violence, according to government authorities.