Title, cellphone, deal with: A haunting photograph of a kid’s again is now a logo of Ukrainian dad and mom’ terror.

The mom’s fingers have been shaking when she began writing on her 2-year-old’s physique. They trembled a lot that she couldn’t write accurately on her first attempt, despite the fact that the knowledge was second nature: Her daughter’s identify, Vira, alongside along with her start date and their household cellphone numbers.

“I believed that if my husband and I died, Vira might discover who she is,” the mom, Oleksandra Makoviy, recalled.

For Vira, standing in a diaper of their home in Kyiv, the writing on her again was a sport. She didn’t know that the bombing had begun.

Ms. Makoviy’s determined try to arrange her daughter for the potential of being orphaned because the household tried to flee the Ukrainian capital throughout the Russian invasion has turn into a wrenching image of the anguish of a nation of fogeys.

A photograph of Vira’s again that Ms. Makoviy shared on Instagram has been seen a whole lot of 1000’s of occasions, after it was amplified by Ukrainian journalists and authorities officers. Messages of assist poured in from folks all around the world — many Ukrainian dad and mom mentioned they’d taken comparable motion, and others turned the picture into artwork honoring the nation’s harmless on social media.

President Volodymyr Zelensky made a direct reference to efforts like Ms. Makoviy’s in a speech to the Spanish Parliament final week.

“Simply think about this: moms in Ukraine write on the backs of their younger kids,” he mentioned, including that Russia was destroying “any foundation of regular life.”

The photograph’s large attain has led some folks, significantly on Twitter, to accuse Ms. Makoviy of staging the second. However she mentioned she shared the photograph as a result of she needed her small viewers on the time to really feel the “insanity” Ukrainian dad and mom have been enduring.

The beginning of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 left Ms. Makoviy in shock. She described going in regards to the household’s every day routine in a dream-like state, and recalled attempting to play with Vira with the sound of bombs within the distance.

However Ms. Makoviy, a 33-year-old painter who was born and raised in Kyiv, was additionally conscious that the man-made island they lived on alongside the Dnipro River had no underground shelter, she mentioned. Visions of the horrors that Russian forces unleashed on the Syrian metropolis of Aleppo flashed in her thoughts.

The household packed their automotive and drove out of the capital night time.

Earlier than they left, Ms. Makoviy scrawled Vira’s info on her again. Vira’s age and incapacity to grasp the state of affairs have been a blessing, Ms. Makoviy mentioned. The kid inherited a love of artwork — she favored to attract on her personal physique — and had no concept of the gravity of what her mom inscribed on her.

Nonetheless, Ms. Makoviy was dropped at tears on the drive west by her daughter’s repeated pleas to go dwelling and to see her grandmother, who had given her the teddy bear they introduced alongside and didn’t escape Ukraine till later.

Ms. Makoviy, who couldn’t sleep or hold meals down till they crossed the border into Moldova, didn’t need to lie. “We are able to’t go dwelling now,” she advised her daughter.

The household finally arrived in a village within the south of France, the place they’ve discovered refuge. Talking by cellphone, Ms. Makoviy mentioned she thought that if the worst had occurred, Vira may not less than have the ability to look again at her mom’s Instagram, stuffed with on a regular basis moments from their life earlier than the struggle, and see that she had been surrounded with love.

After their journey, Vira has bodily reminders of that love as effectively — a number of volunteers on their route gifted her teddy bears. Together with the bear from her grandmother, who’s touring from Poland to reunite along with her, she has amassed a small assortment.