The Third Assault Brigade published a video about a mother who sent her seven sons to the front. After that, their sister told about the rape and murder in the family. Babel raised a story from 20 years ago

Screenshots from the plot of the Third Separate Assault Brigade.

3-тя окрема штурмова бригада

3-тя окрема штурмова бригада

3-тя окрема штурмова бригада

Big family

A cemetery with a population of 40 000 on the outskirts of Berdychiv. Between the two monuments, there seems to be an empty area. There is no cross, no plaque, not even a mound.

Instead, there is a blanket, toys, and sweets lying right on the ground. Nadiya Vikariy brought them. She had been looking for the grave of her older sister Dasha, who died at the age of ten, for 22 years.

Dashaʼs reburial place at the Berdychiv cemetery.

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

Dasha died in 2004, and for four years after that, her mother Tetyana Sannikova convinced everyone that the child was alive. She buried Dashaʼs body immediately after her death, right under a tree in Berdychiv.

In 2008, Daria was reburied at the cemetery at the expense of the city. Her mother was not at the funeral. A cemetery employee helped find the grave of her sister Nadiya.

"Have you seen the condition of the grave? In all these years, none of the family has even visited it. They donʼt feel sorry for it," says Nadiya.

When Nadiya says “nobody”, she means her entire extended family. Dasha was the seventh child (born in 1993), Nadiya is a year younger.

In total, Tetyana Sannikova gave birth to 12 children: Olha and Svitlana Sannikovs from her first husband; Dmytro, Serhiy, Anton, Yevhen, Daria, Nadiya, Mykhailo, Volodymyr, Vitaliy and Bohdan Vikariy from her second husband.

The children’s father Dmytro Vikariy did not live with them permanently. According to Nadia, the eldest sister Olha also lived separately, with her grandmother.

Photo of Dasha from the orphanage.

Personal archives / Babel

And Nadiya.

Personal archives / Babel

In 1995, the children were taken from their mother. Nadiya was a year old at the time. The older children were sent to a boarding school, and the younger ones lived in an orphanage. Nadiya claimed her personal file from the orphanage.

Among other things, it lists the reasons for the childrenʼs removal: "[There was] unsanitary conditions, a lot of dirt. The apartment is full of cockroaches. The floor is dirty, never washed. The childrenʼs clothes are dirty."

The document also states that the children were hungry, slept on the floor covered with a mattress, and were often locked at home without adult supervision. The girl provided the document to the editorial office.

Later, together with her brothers and sisters, Nadiya was raised in Zhytomyr boarding school No. 4. It was a difficult life. According to Nadiya, some teachers, beat the children. Despite this, she liked it there more than in her own family. She fondly remembers the director. She often ran to his office to ask for gifts or complain.

"There were six children. Six or seven. I donʼt remember exactly how many," says Vasyl Levchenko, who headed a boarding school in Zhytomyr for 30 years.

According to him, no one deprived mother Tetyana of her parental rights, the children were only temporarily taken away, until the familyʼs living conditions improved.

The children stayed in the boarding school until 2003. Sisters Nadiya and Dasha were in second grade at the time.

The former director of the boarding school remembers Tetyana Sannikova as a woman with a tough temper: “She was very stubborn. She liked to hold power, and everyone was at attention.”

But he doesn’t remember anything bad or suspicious about her behavior, he didn’t notice her drinking: “She often visited the school. The guardianship authorities allowed her to pick up the children on weekends. The children came back from her well-groomed. What can I say is she was interested in [her children].”

Vasyl Levchenko remembers how Sannikova literally beat the officials to a four-room apartment in Berdychiv and took the children from the boarding school. He also remembers that not all the children wanted to leave the boarding school and go to their mother: “I don’t remember which child, but several times the girl came running to me and said: ʼI don’t want to go to her’.”

That girl was Nadya, and unlike the director of the boarding school, she says she remembers well what happened at her motherʼs house on weekends.

"We were beaten and tied up at home with Dasha. We understood that we didnʼt want a mother like that," she recalls. Nadiya calls her mother nothing other than Borysivna. She says, Borysivna could beat her and her sister for the smallest of things, such as a broken pencil. The girls could be made to kneel all night, tied to table legs, and tied in a sack.

According to Nadya, thatʼs [the moment] when she and Dasha began to suffer from sexual abuse by one of her older brothers.

Babel found that in 2002 the mother tried to take the children back through the courts, but was denied.

And in June 2003, Tetyana Sannikova was also convicted of child abuse (according to Babel, this was Daria Vikariy). But the mother still managed to take the children home.

Life in Berdychiv

A neat nine-story building stands on Nyzhiretska Street (the outskirts of Berdychiv). In the yard is a typical playground for this project.

“I spent the whole night on one of these swings when I first ran away from home,” says Nadiya, looking through the photos that the photographer and I took in Berdychiv.

She quickly recognizes her entrance. There, on the seventh floor, the family lived from 2003 to 2007. It was in this apartment that Dasha died a year after moving in. Four years later, her body (or rather her bones) were found buried on one of the streets adjacent to Nyzhiretska Street.

Nadiya recalls her first impressions of the large apartment that Borysivna had rented.

“I remember that they showed everyone their beds, and who supposed to sleep with whom [there]. Dasha and I stood there, not understanding where we would sleep.” The first thought — that we would be in a large room with our older sister Sveta — turned out to be wrong. Instead, Borysivna told us to lie down on the floor near the radiator.

The girls only managed to sleep on the sofa with Sveta when their dad or older sister Olya came to visit: “At other times, our place was the floor.”

All the children — both boys and girls — were sent to study at the local college No. 14. Since there was only one year of difference between Dasha and Nadiya, they went to the same grade (the third one).

"Dasha didnʼt study for long. She started having some health problems, and she didnʼt go to school. Her mother said she was sick, and she carried some certificates. Nadiya told us (as children) that Dasha wasnʼt in the hospital, that her mother had taken her home and was pissing out of her," says one of the girlsʼ classmates, who asked not to be named.

A classmate recalls that Nadiya constantly came to school with bruises. She said her mother had beaten her. And once she came with broken front teeth: "Either her mother hit her head on the sink, or the sink [fall on] her... In short, she hit her so hard that her two front teeth were broken."

Other classmates of Nadiya (with whom Babel spoke) also remember the large number of bruises and broken teeth. One of them — Volodymyr Kolomyltsev — says that it was difficult for the children to understand whether the mother was beating her daughter or whether she herself was so active and fighting somewhere.

Another classmate — Natalia — recalls the scars on her face. Nadiya constantly said that "mother simply doesnʼt like girls, but likes boys".

All three classmates say that Nadiyaʼs mother treated her sons and daughters differently. They recall that Nadiya looked "miserable", while the boys were well-groomed.

"She had an older sister who lived — if Iʼm not mistaken — with them. Her mother treated this sister normally," adds Natalia.

Tetyana Sannikova herself spoke about this in an interview back in 2008: "I donʼt really like girls. I would rather have ten more boys. I got along with my older daughters, but I couldnʼt do it with my younger ones."

All the classmates interviewed remember well that Nadiya was constantly hungry. They felt sorry for her and often fed her: some with sandwiches, some with fruit, some calling her home for food.

“She used to come to my house. I say, ʼDo you want some coffee?’ She says, ʼI would like toʼ. I poured the coffee, and she started eating it with a spoon. I say, ʼNadya, you need to drink it [not to eat]! I’ll pour you some water nowʼ. And she says, ʼI don’t know what is this [and how to do it correctly]ʼ,” recalls one of her classmates.

Nadiya and Dasha entered the fourth grade together, although Dasha only on papers. The documents that Babel managed to find in the school indicate that Dasha was expelled on December 26, 2004, and she died in June of the same year.

How a dead child studied at the school for two-quarters of the year, the current director Oleksandr Hryhortsevych cannot explain. He took up his position only in 2006. The headmistress who worked at the time died. The director at the time has long since retired, is in poor condition, and is over 80.

The current director of the college taught geography many years ago to Nadiya, and he doesnʼt remember Dasha at all. Although, he remembers the boys.

"They were athletes. I would never have suspected that they could treat their sisters like that," says Oleksandr, who is obviously already aware of the scandal that has unfolded around the family. He says that the boys behaved well with other children — no fights, no other aggression. They willingly helped at school.

The man also speaks positively about the childrenʼs mother Tetyana, who actively participated in the childrenʼs lives: "You know, what surprised me —there is a mother of many children. She should constantly to cook, to wash, and to clean [a house], but she is constantly at school. She brought the children, and picked them up, and itʼs every-day story. That is, to suspect that this is some kind of dysfunctional family... All the children were dressed and fed."

School staff who remember Nadiya say they heard nothing about the abuse in the family. I ask her why was she silent?

"The problem is not that I was silent. The problem is that they didnʼt believe me. The children believed, but the adults didnʼt."

Unlike adults, classmates remember an episode that scared them and made them angry: the day their mother held a public trial for Nadiya in front of the class. She stood her daughter at the blackboard and made her read a list of “crimes” from a piece of paper. Nadiya was in tears. The children could see that she was scared.

"Everyone was sitting in their seats. Nadiya came in with her mother. Her mother said that Nadiya wanted to apologize for stealing everyoneʼs food. I was so outraged that she started counting that she had stolen a bun, an apple, and something else, even though she hadnʼt," recalls classmate Natalia.

“How do you know that didn’t happen?” I ask.

“Well, because I didnʼt take, for example, those apples that Nadiya allegedly stole from me. I never brought apples to school.”

The children who were friends with Nadiya then defended her, each in their own way — some with the truth, others with the opposite.

“Mom was standing next to her, pulling her [of her clothes]. As I understood it, Nadiya wrote it so that she [the mother] would let her go. She just wrote down random names and what she stole from whom. I understood that if I said now that nothing was taken from me, Nadiya would still come for lying to mom. So I agreed. And my classmate Natalia said that nothing was stolen from her, that she didn’t get into this situation. The mother beat Nadiya up for it... I was afraid of that woman myself, although she was a stranger to me,” says classmate Volodymyr, whose name was also on the list.

Nadiyaʼs classmates tell the story of the day her mother held a public trial for her in front of the class and the teacher.

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

Nadiya listens attentively to the memories of her classmates about herself that we recorded.

“I can tell you what it was like from my side,” she replies after a short pause.

Hunger and beatings

Nadiya is ashamed to remember that episode. Shame is followed by anger.

"You know, she — as it can be said — opened the door with her foot. She told my class teacher what was going to happen, where she should stand, what the children would be listening to, and so on," the girl says about Borysivna.

She says that the day before, her mother had her kneel in front of a stool and ordered her to write all night long, some thing she didnʼt do: "I had to guess who she thought I had stolen from. I just listed all the products I knew. I wrote them down, and if she didnʼt like the quantity, or the name, or something else, she could beat me. I kept rewriting, she could tear it up, and I would write everything again."

Going to school in the morning with this piece of paper, Nadiya was most afraid that her classmates wouldnʼt confirm what she had written.

“Where did this story about theft come from anyway? There were rumors that you took some kind of sandwich from someone?" I ask Nadiya.

“Of course! They grabbed our hands as we [searched] through bags. Especially the adults.

Nadiya and her sister regularly stole food. They stole mostly from teachers, the headmaster, and nurses. They quickly realized that adults had more food. They tried not to take it from children:

"Because we liked these classmates. We knew that they wouldnʼt be friends with us if we stole from them."

They took other peopleʼs food because they always wanted to eat. Nadiya recalls, that at home they only got spoiled food. If the boys [brothers] ate everything and nothing spoiled, they [the girls] went hungry. Dasha taught Nadiya to rummage through other peopleʼs bags, and also to find food in garbage cans:

"I mean, she was such an ʼoperations directorʼ to feed us. Iʼll tell you that the feeling of hunger is probably the worst thing that can happen. The one point is when thereʼs simply nothing to eat and no one eats. But itʼs a completely different point when the brothers go around with those [full] plates, and we just..."

Since the girls were forbidden to take food at home, when they took it, their mother — according to Nadiya — called it theft. She punished theft severely. Nadiya could not understand why some people could eat and others could not:

"For example, they ate kilkis. Dasha and I stole what was left at night. Why when this parts of fish came out of our asses, why did they force us to eat this shit? It was incomprehensible."

Nadiya says that they were often tied — either to a table leg or to a battery. Her sister taught her how to untie herself. Also — how to find food in her dreams:

“She told me: ʼLook, let’s go to sleep now, and in my dream I will find you, and we will find [food] thereʼ. And I really dream that Dasha finds me. I understand that this is a dream and that we will wake up soon, so we need to run quickly. We always looked for the boarding school and the basement where they stored food. We found it and ate there. And when we woke up, I could say: ʼDasha, I’m not hungry right now!’ And she could say: ʼSee, thatʼs the point! I told you!’ And she told me that she had the same dream.”

When Dasha is gone, Nadiya would dream of concrete corridors in which she searches and cannot find her sister.

Nadiya says that in the arsenal of physical punishments of the mother, there were the following: beating with a dog leash; holding heavy objects over the head for hours; beating with a carpet beater; beating with a rolling pin for dough.

“Dasha very often taught me that ʼcry a little, scream (so that she understands that you are in pain), and then stop screaming and don’t cry’. Although, I thought the opposite — the more you scream, the more possibility that the neighbours will hear. That someone will come, and somehow interrupt her. When we screamed loudly, she could cover our mouths and continue to beat [us]. Dasha told me so that she doesn’t get pleasure from it, you have not to scream,” recalls Nadiya.

Nadiya says the scars all over her face are the result of beatings. She only got one — a large one in the middle of her forehead — when she accidentally hit her head in a shelter. Her thick, long hair hides the scars on her head. She says that was a belt buckle.

“We had bald spots on our heads. Well, mother just pulled out [our hair]. Some kind of inspection came to our house, and my mother said: ʼThey shaved it themselves. They took a razor and shaved it,’” Nadiya recalls. She casually adds that when her head was bleeding, she would constantly pick off the scabs during lessons. She liked this activity.

Nadiya says that if the mother did not touch her sons, then one of the older sisters — Sveta — at first also suffered. Borysivna wanted her to join in torturing the girls:

"I remember that Sveta really did not want to tie us up. She did not want to stand and control us while we ate our own shit. I remember how she changed clothes and cried. She hide her tears. I did ask her: ʼSveta, are you crying?ʼ, but she turned around and wiped her eyes."

When the children slept naked on the cold floor, Svetlana (after waiting for everyone to fall asleep) quietly brought the girls a blanket: "Although, I understand, that after a very short time, Sveta herself was beating us with the same pleasure [as mother], even with anger. She didnʼt feel sorry anymore."

The eldest brother — Dmytro — took on the task of standing up for the girls before their mother. Nadiya remembers him with gratitude. It is now her favourite male name. But when he went to the army, there was no one to protect the girls.

"She [mother] loved her sons very much, was proud of them, and told everyone what excellent sons she had. She raised rapists and sadists, and was very proud of them. She is still proud of them," the girl says.

Her words refer to her two brothers.

Rape

Nadiya talks calmly and almost casually about how her and Dasha were regularly raped by their brothers. Neither her intonation nor her facial expressions betray strong emotions.

According to her, one of the older brothers started it. He forced the girls to have oral sex: he sprinkled sugar on his genitals and offered the girls "some sweets". As she remembers, the violence began back in Zhytomyr, when they were taken away for the weekend. She says there was even more abuse in Berdychiv. When they were alone, when they were both, the brother would take them out to a landing near the house and rape them (this involved forced oral sex).

The girl recalls that later, the older brother began to involve the younger brother in this process. He had not yet reached puberty at that time, so at first, he mostly touched the girls and just watched. Nadiya says that when he became a teenager, when the family moved to the village, he began to rape her with penetration. By that time, she was already alone. Her sister had died.

While Dasha was alive, the girls tried to complain to their mother together.

“She started listening to us a lot: ʼOh, what are you talking about? Where it was?’ We told her everything in detail, thinking she believed us. Yes, she beats us, she hates us, but maybe she believes us now?”

Nadiya says that Borysivna listened to them, and then called her brother. She ordered them to repeat everything in front of him, but the boy refused. Then the girls were punished for “lying”:

“She took a [stick] from the crib (unscrewed it) and poked it between [our] legs. She made us say that we made it all up. We had to kneel in front of him [the brother] and apologize.”

Nadiya recalls that her mother forced her and Dasha to walk around the house completely naked. Nadiya began to dress only after Dashaʼs death. That is, when she was 10 years old.

According to her, when her mother beat the girls, she also could first tear their clothes off and call them whores, sharply grab their genitals and could hit them with some object between their legs. According to her, from these hits, scars remained on the inside of the pelvis, in the intimate area.

The girls did not tell their classmates about the rape. But the teacher of Dasha and Nadiyaʼs junior classes (whom Babel found) recalls something about their motherʼs strange behavior. The girls came to her in the third grade. Dasha did not stay at school for long, approximately two quarters. Then, supposedly for health reasons, she studied at home. The teacher says that the familyʼs living conditions looked decent. She saw them by herself.

“I came to their house, saw this child [Dasha], saw that she had some bruises. And then her mother brought me certificates [from the medical institution] and told me not very pleasant things. That the child was not doing what she was supposed to. That she was hurting herself, that she was... something... I don’t remember for sure,” Lyubov begins to stammer.

It is clear that she is uncomfortable. After a few clarifying questions, she does say that Dasha’s mother told her that the child was “taking things and putting them where they shouldn’t be”, supposedly for sexual pleasure.

When the teacher learns about Nadiyaʼs recent statements, she feels sick, her hands shake. She drinks water and takes a long, confused look at everything she knows about Nadiya.

If we put her words together, it turns out that Nadiya, who, unlike Dasha, attended school, turned to her — she saw that the child had bruises all over her body. The teacher says she took the girl to the first aid station and to the head teacher. She doesnʼt know how they reacted there.

However, what alarmed her most in this story wasnʼt even the bruises, but the motherʼs strange stories about her own child.

"First of all, there was a warning that her mother was telling these very unpleasant and strange things. Generally, parents, if something like this happens in the family, keep it quiet and all of this things are inaccessible," says the teacher.

When asked how it came about that the child who died in June 2004 was transferred to the fourth grade, where she studied until December, the teacher says that the third grade was closed to the child based on current grades, because she was sick. In the fourth grade, Dasha was transferred to individual study. Nadiya says that at that time, the homework for the dead sister was done by the older sister Svitlana.

After talking to Babel, the teacher forbade using her words in the publication. We are publishing them because they shed light on the conditions in which the girls lived and the actions of their mother before Dashaʼs death. We are not revealing the teacherʼs name.

The day Dasha passed away

Nadiya remembers the day of her sisterʼs death in detail.

For about two hours, she recreates in detail the words and events that preceded the tragedy. Itʼs hard for her to remember how long it all lasted.

What follows is her version of events.

One day, Borysivna ordered Svitlana to bring the girls to her room. $900 had disappeared from the house, and they began to interrogate Nadiya and Dasha. Borysivna promised not to beat them for the truth, but there was a nuance.

"Dasha and I probably didnʼt know what dollars were [at all] then. We didnʼt understand what they were talking about. Even in the boarding school, when we were caroling and we had money, we exchanged it for flashlights. That is, we didnʼt know that you could buy food with money. And thatʼs why we didnʼt steal it."

The sisters were given time to think and return the money. They didn’t understand what exactly [they have] to return. Usually, the clever and rebellious Dasha generated ideas on how to avoid punishment from their mother. But this time the sister was silent. Nadiya took the floor — she randomly pointed to an open chest of drawers and said that they had taken the money from there.

“And Borysivna was like: ʼOf course, it was me who put it there.’ And I thought, like, am I a prophet?ʼ or what?..” says Nadiya.

The girls were brutally beaten and made to think about where they had hidden the money. Nadiya recalls that they couldn’t go by their own.

To get outside, Nadiya made up the story that they had hidden the dollars in a tree near the school: "This was to somehow get us out of the apartment. Because while we were in the apartment, we were in trouble. I saw it in her [motherʼs] eyes — by how angry and worried she was."

All the way to school, the sisters cried and convinced the eldest sister Svitlana that they hadn’t stolen anything. But she didn’t believe them. Nadiya recalls that at home they were beaten again. They were hungry and exhausted, and threatened that now they wouldn’t even give them water.

To buy some time, they told their mother that they had given the money to a classmate.

“For a day or two, they didn’t beat us. They didn’t feed us, but they didn’t beat us either. Borysivna went to that classmate, but she didn’t find the money,” Nadiya says.

The twin brothersʼ birthday was approaching, and Borysivna began to take care of the preparations. Almost the entire family went to the village to celebrate.

Nadiya, Dasha, the eldest sister Svitlana and the youngest brother (who was still a baby at the time) remained in the Berdychiv apartment.

The mother left the younger girls with a bunch of tasks about the house.

"She left in the morning. Sveta brought us to her room. There was a big closet there. Borysivna probably threw all the things out of it so that we could put everything together. So that everything would be perfect. She also had such a bugbear [in her head] that everything had to be perfect: T-shirts have to lie with T-shirts, but in the right order of the colors," says Nadiya.

At that moment, Dasha and Nadiya were so starved that they couldn’t lift the piles of things. Nadiya recalls that to stir them up, Sveta brought a bowl of cold water into the room and abruptly poured it over their heads. Dasha lost consciousness.

“To be honest, I thought she was pretending not to put those things away. Sveta put her in the hallway, and I was very angry [at her] at that time that I was left alone, and she could sleep,” says Nadiya.

Soon Nadiya noticed that her older sister was nervous. She tried to wake Dasha up, but she didnʼt wake up. This went on for some time until Svitlana moved her sister to the sofa, where she soon came to her senses.

“She started screaming really hard. She screamed so much that I... She had never screamed like that. Never! ʼGive me food! I want to eat!ʼ Something like that. She started demanding food. And I heard Sveta screaming at her, like ʼEat the soup! Here! I’m giving you soup!’ Then she says something like, ʼWhat can I do, if it’s spoiled?’ And I still think that spoiled soup is not the worst food, it’s even very tasty food. I lay down next to Bohdan [my younger brother], and falling asleep, I thought if only Sveta would offer me spoiled soup right now.”

The next morning, Nadiya woke up from the screams. She immediately understood that something had happened. She remembers that Svitlana gave her bread, strictly ordered her to look after her younger brother and not to go into her sisterʼs room, and went somewhere.

As soon as Sveta left, Nadiya broke the ban.

"I immediately lay down next to her [Dasha] and started to wake her up. I remember very clearly that I wanted to lift her arm, but it was difficult for me. I thought that Sveta might have tied her to the bed or something. I started to wake her up, started to cover her with everything I could, tried to warm her up. I kept telling her that I had bread — to get up, that there was bread, that we would eat bread now. But she didnʼt get up. I started to listen to her heart — I put my head on her chest, tried to hear at least something, at least some sound. I didnʼt hear anything. I remember very clearly [the moment when] I realized that she would never wake up again," recalls Nadiya.

Sveta returned home with her mother. Nadiya and her youngest brother were locked on the balcony. The girl doesnʼt remember how long they were there. Then her mother came to get them:

"She opened the door to this balcony like this and says: ʼNow everything will be fine [with us].ʼ She was red. I asked her: ʼWere you crying?ʼ She says: ʼNo, itʼs just really hot outside.ʼ I asked: ʼWhereʼs Dasha?ʼ She told me: ʼDasha wonʼt live with us anymore.ʼ They immediately sat me down at the table, gave me a big piece of bread. I donʼt remember what I ate, but I remember this big piece of bread and that itʼs all mine, that I can eat by myself. Then I thought ʼwell, itʼs good that Dasha isnʼt here, [because] I can eat it allʼ. Then I thought that itʼs a pity, Dasha doesnʼt see how much bread I have."

Nadiya says that at first, Sveta kept reminding her sister how much better her life was now. She [Nadiya] was allowed to sit at the common table, well-dressed, and allowed to sleep on the couch. Nadiya doesn’t have any childhood photos.

But on September 1, in the fourth grade, she was put in school and photographed for the first time with everyone. She says, this didn’t last long. Soon everything became as it was, but she had to endure the bullying alone, without her sister.

"I remember the first time I had a dream about Dasha. I was so happy. For a very long time, I sat alone, cried, and argued with her [in my imagination], saying that she had a happier life now, that she had a happy family, that she had left me here. I argued and imagined that she was answering me in some way. And when I stopped arguing with her like that in my head, I started dreaming about her. Then I realized that I would not argue with Dasha anymore, because otherwise I would not see her in my dreams anymore," recalls Nadiya.

Exposure

Three years after Dashaʼs death, the family moved to Stary Solotvyn. This village is 50 kilometers from Berdychiv, on the riverbank. There is a school, a kindergarten, and a church. Grocery stores line the asphalt road.

The streets are crowded. Children are playing on almost every corner. When you turn right from the central road, a street opens up that leads to the forest. Nadiyaʼs family moved into one of the houses on this street in 2007.

The photographer and I head there to see where the girl lived. She was 13 years old at the time.

The village of Stary Solotvyn is located 50 km from Berdychiv.

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

The house is cluttered. Itʼs clear that no one has lived in it for a long time. At the entrance to the yard, there is a pile of gas bills.

The basement, the hayloft, the barn, the attic — while I walk near the house, Nadiya is listing on the phone the places where one of her younger brothers raped her.

According to Nadiya, one of the older brothers (who also raped her) was no longer living with them at that time. She remembers the younger one as a cruel person — from childhood he loved to mock not only her, but also animals.

She says that her mother continued to beat Nadiya. Because of this, she began to regularly run away from home.

The basement, the hayloft, the barn, the attic of the house — the places where, Nadiya claims, she was raped.

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

Natalia — a former classmate of Nadia from Berdychiv at the time — remembers how one day, at 6 AM, a girl ran from the village to her house barefoot:

"She was walking from Solotvyn along the highway. At night, some uncle gave her a lift and helped her. He also said that ʼmaybe I can give you some money if youʼre hungryʼ. I remember then giving her my shoes. She was wearing a shirt and a pocket on her chest. There was raspberry dripping down there. It looked like blood. And it was a little scary. We asked why she ran away. ʼMom told the whole village that I stole dollars from herʼ. Accordingly, she beat her for it, and she ran away."

Nadiya often ran barefoot to the principal of the Starosolotvynsky Lyceum (where the children were sent to study after the move) Maryna Lyashevska. The woman says that the child was not loved, it was obvious. She regularly noticed conflicts between daughter and mother.

Dasha did not study at the village lyceum. She was no longer among the living, but she was not considered dead either. Information about the existence of another child in the family surfaced in 2008 (according to Maryna Lyashevska) by chance.

The question arose with the village head, because the mother was taking certificates about the composition of the family, and she was paid money for all the children.

"He called me and said, ʼListen, she still has Dasha here [in the list], but is she visiting school?ʼ I said: ʼNo, I have never seen her here.ʼ I asked her [Tetyana Sannikova] about it, and she told me that she lives with relatives, because she is disabled. I have never had such cases before, so I just believed her," recalls the former lyceum director.

Later, she asked the woman to provide a certificate from the special school where Dasha studies. After several months of waiting, this never happened, and the director informed the village head. He reported further [about it].

During the same period, her father Dmytro Vikariy also began asking about Dasha. The man lived in the same village, but separately from the children.

“Borysivna (the biological mother) also had an influence on him. She also beat him. I saw it. How she threw a bucket of fish with the water at him, how she chased him away, how she yelled [at him],” says Nadiya.

She says that in recent years her father has been abusing alcohol: "He always — as soon as he drinks a little — immediately comes to Borysivna: ʼWhere is my daughter? Where is Dasha? Take me to Dasha!"

She argued with him a lot. When he kept saying this, I kept thinking, like, “why doesnʼt he ask me?"

And one day he asked.

Nadiya told her father everything, but asked him not to tell anyone: “I told him: ʼIf you tell anyone, they’ll kill me too. I’ll die. I won’t survive there anymore’.”

Dad listened, and told Nadiya to go home and be quiet. He also promised that he would soon take her to live with him. After that, the man turned to the village headman.

The next day after this conversation, the police and a woman from the guardianship authorities arrived at the familyʼs house.

Nadiya recalls that by a "lucky" coincidence, the day before she had been beaten and tied up again at home. The woman demanded that the mother show her daughter, otherwise, she threatened to enter the house by force with the police:

"She [the mother] came running. I remember, she was so scared. She threw my clothes at me, and said: ʼQuickly untie yourself. I know you can [do it]. And sit quietly, not to say anything!ʼ.”

The woman from the guardianship authorities took Nadiya aside and quietly said that she knew the whole truth — about the beatings, and about Dasha, that she didn’t want to live at home — the girl’s father had told her everything.

The main point was that she had come to pick her up, all she needed was her consent. The woman took Nadiya’s temperature, and it showed 40°C. Nadiya recalls that the only thing she asked was to muster up the courage and say — in the presence of the police — that she wanted to go to the shelter.

Nadiya remembered well the name of the woman she had seen only once in her life. It was Olena Volodymyrivna.

“I saw her talking to her. No one had ever talked to her [mother] like that before,” Nadiya recalls.

After that, she was taken to a Zhytomyr shelter. The girl was 14 years old.

Dasha is found

Inna Piontkivska, who worked as a teacher at the shelter at the time, remembers how Nadiya came to them — an scared, cornered child who didn’t know who to expect help from, and was afraid of everything.

Other shelter employees, with whom Babel spoke, recall that the girl was “bright”, never showed aggression, tried to help the teachers, and loved spending time with younger children. Nadiya also remembers the teachers with warmth. The shelter was the best thing that happened in her childhood.

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

The "Sunny House" shelter in Zhytomyr, where Nadiya was taken in 2008.

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

Inna Piontkivska also noticed that the child was covered in scars, and she said that she was beaten and tied up at home. At the same time, the former teacher recalls, the girl told her about her sisterʼs murder.

"She said that she knew that Dasha had been killed, but I donʼt think she could explain how it happened. She always said that her mother didnʼt like girls. That she had a ʼspecialʼ attitude towards them," the teacher recalls.

When asked whether she believed the childʼs horrific stories, Inna answers in the affirmative:

"You understand... I worked at the institution for 20 years. There are moments when you really understand if this information true or if it fabricated."

While Nadiya was in the shelter, law enforcement officers discovered her sister’s remains. When Dasha Vikariy was found dead in 2008, the story gained media attention.

The mother Tetyana Sannikova told reporters at the time that she and her eldest daughter Svitlana had hidden the body on the riverbank: “Dasha was kind of sick. There were boils on one finger, then on the other. Some kind of infection, probably. On June 19, 2004, she got up in the morning, ate something. She fell, and foam came out of her mouth… It’s a pity that this happened.”

Even before the childʼs death, as was publicly reported, Tetyana Sannikova was allegedly conditionally sentenced. The first time — for theft, the second time — for beating Dasha. The Zhytomyr Regional Prosecutorʼs Office has so far been able to confirm only the second crime for Babel. Today, the criminal record is considered expunged.

The investigation conducted after Dashaʼs body was found revealed no signs of violent death. In fact, if there were any, it was impossible to detect them.

"The causes of Dariaʼs death were not established at the time due to the skeletonization of the body, since it was hidden for quite a long time," a representative of the Zhytomyr Regional Prosecutorʼs Office Vitaliy Kuzmenko told Babel.

In 2008, Tetyana Sannikova was tried only for fraud and forgery of documents.

“For more than three years, she received social benefits for this child and forged documents, submitting documents stating that the child was alive,” the prosecutor explains.

The maximum she faced under the articles charged was five years in prison. But Tetyana Sannikova did not go to prison, she was granted amnesty. Law enforcement officers also investigated the actions of representatives of the guardianship and trusteeship bodies. However, the criminal case regarding official negligence was closed. They were not held accountable.

While the trial was ongoing, Nadiya was in a shelter. She was waiting for her father to pick her up. Later, the girl learned that he had died that same year.

Her mother took her home again. How did this happen? Nadiya recalls that there was a court case where her mother could have been deprived of her parental rights. Nadiyaʼs opinion was heard at the court — she said that she wanted to live with her mother. The girl recalls that she was convinced by Borysivna, who constantly called the shelter. The former teacher also confirms her influence on the child.

"There was a period when her mother came to visit her. Nadiya didnʼt want to go out. Mother tried to influence her," recalls Inna Piontkivska.

After another return home, Nadiyaʼs life once again became the same as before, but now she ran away even more often. She ran to her classmates and teachers. She begged to go back to the shelter.

When asked why it was so important for the mother to return her child home every time, Nadiya says that it was important to her [mother] what people would say.

When Nadiya ran away from home, she asked to be returned to the "Sunny House" shelter.

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

lryna Vlasiuk / «Бабель»

Four years later, the court nevertheless deprived Tetyana Sannikova of her parental rights. Nadiya was almost 18 at the time. Adults finally intervened in the situation. This happened after Nadiya moved to Berdychiv to study at a school.

At the age of 16, she met a family that wanted to take her into their care. Nadiya describes that family as follows:

“The best thing that can happen to a small, traumatized child who was left without love, security, and care is to feel what a mother and father are like, to feel this unconditional love that can heal so many wounds.”

This family went to court to deprive the biological mother of her parental rights. Nadiya was awarded UAH 300 in alimony per month from Borysivna. The girl began to live in a foster family, and she never returned to her birth family.

Present

“I wrote a statement and am publicly talking about it so that other children who are currently being raped do not make my mistake — to remain silent, withdraw into themselves, and blame themselves,” Nadiya reported on the Threads network on March 10, 2026, that law enforcement officers had registered a criminal case. She was provoked into this and dozens of other public posts about her childhood by the story about the “Mother who Sent Her Seven Sons to the War”.

"I had suicidal thoughts. I thought about different options. I remember seeing on the news about a girl who jumped out of a window. I thought something like ʼwow, theyʼll write about me in the news too, that I committed suicideʼ. Then I had this thought, but everyone will blame me for doing that. I have a story, but no one knows it except my loved ones, and even then they donʼt know all the details. Then I went to Threads [with my post]," recalls Nadiya.

The girl has already been interrogated by investigators. It lasted 5 hours. The proceedings are being investigated into the rape of a minor. Nadiya has the status of a victim. Law enforcement officers are conducting interrogations and searching for witnesses.

According to prosecutor Vitaliy Kuzmenko, investigators are interrogating the entire family and people who were involved in this story: social workers, acquaintances of the children. The prosecutor does not say whether Nadiyaʼs mother and brothers have already been interrogated.

In response to Babelʼs request, the Third Army Corps reported that at the time of preparing the response, they had not received any official messages from law enforcement officers. If such messages are received, "the military command will ensure the necessary interaction". “Troika” refused to comment on events "not related to the performance of military service duties by servicemen".

Despite the fact that, in addition to rape, Nadiya filed a complaint about torture, murder and concealment of the crime. The prosecutorʼs office does not plan to re-investigate the circumstances under which Dasha died. There are no new proceedings. Accordingly, there is no talk of exhuming the remains at the moment.

"In order to carry it out, we need to understand whether it will lead to any positive results. Just to carry out an exhumation in order to establish that the remains were not actually preserved, well, thatʼs kind of a shady procedure," says the prosecutor.

Babel tried in various ways to contact members of Nadiyaʼs family whom she had publicly mentioned. We contacted the Third Army Corps, wrote personal messages on Instagram to the brothers who are accused, and to her mother Tetyana Sannikova on Facebook.

We also found and called their mobile numbers, but all of them are now invalid. We contacted the lawyer of one of the accused brothers. He filed a lawsuit for the protection of honor and dignity against Nadiya.

We reached out to Svitlanaʼs older sister, but she refused to comment.

In the end, we arrived at Tetyana Sannikovaʼs apartment, but her son Yevhen did not allow us to talk to the woman. We managed to talk for a few minutes on the phone only with her oldest brother Dmytro Vikariy. Nadiya did not accuse him of violence. On the contrary, she said that in childhood he protected her from her mother.

Dmytro refused to comment on his sisterʼs words, saying that neither he nor other family members had seen what Nadiya was talking about at home. When asked to pass on the request for comment to his mother and brothers, he replied that his family would not participate in the "media campaign".

"I can tell you now that Barack Obama raped me. Are you going to go ask Barack Obama if he raped me?" says Dmytro.

“What about the child’s death, Dmytro? Is that also a fabrication?” I asked.

“No, she really died. Well, there is a moment. Well, it has already happened, so it is not a new story. Children get sick and die. It happens.”

“What about the testimonies of the dozen people I interviewed who say that Nadiya was constantly beaten? Is that also a fabrication? Is everyone around making it up? How [is it possible]?”

"I donʼt know. You have a second person, so interview the one."

While the investigation is ongoing, Dmytro said that the family will not comment on the situation.

In the conversation, he also mentioned that Nadiya is currently collecting money from subscribers, and this is her point.

Nadiya really opened a “banka”. She says that people have given her more than UAH 200 000. She is currently unable to work due to her health condition – she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Nadiya provided the editorial office with a relevant document from a psychiatrist. According to her, the money is primarily used to cover household needs and recover, she also recently paid off her housing and loan debts and hired a lawyer.

Nadiya will insist that law enforcement investigate the circumstances of her sisterʼs death as well. I ask her what kind of justice she expects for herself.

“I want my biological mother and [the older] sister to go to prison”

“What about your brothers?”

“[I want] a fair trial [for them]. The brothers were children and they were simply repeating Borysivnaʼs words. But Sannikova must answer for her crimes, despite the fact that she gave birth to such Cossacks.”