On the back seat of Iryna Bobrova’s car is a copy of George Orwell’s 1984. She gives the novel to colleagues she thinks might be prone to Russian propaganda.
Bobrova is employed at a women’s prison in central Ukraine that, for security reasons, cannot be named. She has worked there for 25 years, serving as its director for the past 15 years. She sees the worst of people at the prison, she says. But also the best. She admires how people can aspire to be good under ethical leadership. She also tells prisoners she is their mirror: “If they are good, I’ll show my best,” she says. “If they are tough, they see I can be tough as well.”
The prison is one of five Ukrainian penitentiaries where children are allowed to stay with their mothers until age 3. Fifteen children live there now—the maximum the facility can accommodate. In all, 300 women are serving time in the prison. In Ukraine, most women charged with crimes must pay fines or serve probation. Prison sentences for women are handed down only for repeat offenders or serious crimes, including murder, robbery, child pornography and corruption.
Running a prison during wartime has made Bobrova rethink her priorities. Especially when the fighting has been a few hundred miles away—not that far in a time of long-range missiles.
“In the beginning, I was scared,” she says. “We were instructed that in case of emergency, an administration might make independent decisions on how to act. We gathered in a kind of a general headquarters. We discussed all the options: occupation, armed resilience—though we do not have many arms here. At some point, I even thought, we can make a hole in the fence and let the mothers escape. We considered that the employees might temporarily take the babies. At the same time, we also have a very good bomb shelter, so I suggested the employees live here with the families, if needed.”
Prisoners and employees alike were most anxious during the first month of the war. Citizens and institutions were advised by the government not to turn on lights in the evening, so as not to be visible to Russian forces. Prisons in Ukraine are often located in industrial zones, areas often targeted during shelling.
Bobrova’s concerns were well founded. Two out of five women’s prisons similar to this one were attacked during the first month of the war. One of them is near a major steel plant in Mariupol, the southern port city that was heavily bombed in the spring of 2022. In March, many civilians were trying to flee the city despite Russia’s unwillingness to provide a green corridor for their safety. Power stations were deliberately bombed by the Russian army to make the city unlivable. Without electricity, the water supply can’t work properly. Ukrainian authorities said they couldn’t expect Moscow to follow the basic rules of war. Prisoners at the Mariupol prison became unruly and were fighting each other, the head of that facility told Bobrova.
In Melitopol, in southeastern Ukraine, which was occupied during the first days of the war, Russian occupiers forced local officials to shift allegiances. The head of the local prison fled town.
Several months into the war, Bobrova feels confident that her prison is less at risk of a siege. Should there be a siege, she says, there is enough food and resources to survive for at least half a year.
Bobrova is an attractive, middle-aged woman who dresses elegantly. She speaks with the steely authority that comes with her job. There were tears in her eyes, however, when she told me about buying meat for the prisoners’ children at a local supermarket. She felt bad for depleting so much of the store’s supply, and when she explained this to other customers in line, an elderly woman approached her and handed her 200 hryvnia (roughly $5).
The prison building where mothers live with their children is lined with images from cartoons. It’s a tidy and colorful space that looks a bit like a nursery or children’s dormitory. But the women in it are dressed in black; when they go outside, they must wear headscarves or hats.
Tetyana Yaroshenko, the director of what is called the Kids’ House, began working at the facility in 1998. She retired in 2020, in her mid-40s, but recently returned. When we enter the building, it’s clear that Yaroshenko knows every child well. She mentions one who started to walk a few days ago. While we’re chatting with the prisoners, I spot a female guard who takes a minute to dress a curly-haired boy in a T-shirt that reads “Daddy’s son.” Ironically, most of the children have single mothers.
Bobrova and Yaroshenko explain that men rarely stay with convicts. The prison has numerous rooms for meetings, and visitors are allowed to come for three days. But the rooms are often empty. It’s usually the prisoners’ mothers, and their other children, who visit.
When Bobrova was developing a system for the prison, she wanted to model it after her own experience as a mother. She believes young mothers should have at least some breaks and can’t stay near their babies 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so she developed a sort of kindergarten where nannies look after the youngest children at times.
Bobrova and Yaroshenko see their mission as bringing out the “maternal instinct” in the prisoners. She does not idealize them, she says, insisting that there are good and bad ones. Many of them have problems with drugs, come from abusive families or are gang members.
“If somebody looks like a perfect mother in detention, it can’t be the case in freedom,” she says. “This year, I lived through major disappointment. There was a girl here, sentenced for murder, but an extremely kind and good mother. She explained her crimes by systematic abuse, in her family, then in the husband’s family. She had the most beautiful boy, whom we all admired. If the mother remains in prison, the child could be given to relatives or temporarily adopted. Yet if the mother would be released in less than a year, after the kid turns three, there is a chance he stays with the mother until the end of the term. We did everything possible in this case to request her earlier release,” Bobrova says with regret. Yet as soon as the girl was freed, she returned to her previous life. The administration saw the mother asking for money on Facebook and the boy looking neglected. Bobrova wondered: would it have been better if the mother had stayed longer and the child had been given to a foster family? There are many good parents who return to a normal life, she notes, yet if they have no place to turn to, they will likely commit crimes again.
Bobrova and Yaroshenko strongly defend the system that allows mothers to be with their children when they are young, given that conditions for the kids are often worse on the outside. And Bobrova is proud of the work that she has undertaken to refurbish and decorate the cells.
In the canteen, she says, jokingly, “You should have seen it before. People would say it looked like ‘a prison.’ Now, it’s just ‘an institution.’” She adds, “When people are deprived of basic things like food and comfort, they think just about that imminent need—they won’t reconsider what they did or why they’re serving their term. That’s why a certain level of dignity should be maintained—mental space to reflect [on] the past.”
As it happens, I visited the prison during the biggest air raid in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. The country, including the capital of Kyiv, was targeted with scores of missiles, at least half of which were shot down by air defense forces.
It was the first time during the war when prisoners did not complain that they needed to stay in the bomb shelter for more than five hours.
“In the very beginning,” Bobrova says, “there was a person who said, ‘it’s your war, the war is there behind the fence—we have nothing to do with it.’”
Bobrova likes to say that her prison is a small projection of the state. If one looks at the individual destinies of the prisoners, it does reflect many Ukrainian tragedies that have taken place since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
Nadia (names of prisoners have been changed) is from Northern Saltivka, one of the most destroyed neighborhoods of Kharkiv—the second-largest city in Ukraine that has been heavily shelled since the first day of invasion. Nadia’s oldest daughter, who is 19, was just meters away from an explosion. While cradling her son in her hands, Nadia speaks of her husband, who from March until September 2022 lived under the Russian occupation in a village that had no phone service.
Olha, who is serving an eight-year sentence, gave birth to a son in detention in January 2022. She is from a village in the southern Mykolaiv region; it’s not occupied but is close to the frontline. Her husband works in Kremenchuk, an otherwise peaceful town in central Ukraine where a rocket destroyed a shopping mall on June 27, 2022, killing more than 20 people.
One prisoner, Vira, approached me to ask if I knew anything about the prison in Mariupol. She had been incarcerated there before being evacuated to Western Ukraine, then taken to the prison. She has no idea what happened to her former companions.
Svitlana comes from occupied Melitopol. Her five-year-old daughter was in a boarding school there, and there are rumors that it was relocated. Svitlana is at a loss as to how she can get any news about her daughter.
The colony’s headmaster tells a story of a woman who nearly collapsed upon finding out that her father, who raised three of her kids, died in the conflict zone. Fortunately, it was only a rumor, and he was still alive.
Alla tells of how when she was brought to the prison from a detention center in Bakhmut region, shells were falling around her van.
Yulia comes to me to ask for help in finding her son. He joined the army and is now considered a missing person. “I am in touch with my husband,” she says, “and as soon as I ask about him, my husband tries to change the topic. My elder son is in prison in another town, the youngest is too small, but I will be released in four months. And when I am free, I’ll go search for him.” Yulia says this with a sad smile.
Daria, who is 20, believes that her boyfriend, who is 22, is a Russian prisoner of war. He had disappeared since the last time they spoke, in February, 2022. Daria calls his mother once a week, concerned that she is being fooled by people who demand money in return for her son.
Bobrova says the prisoners want the same things: to be released, to see their children. But while talking with a group of them, one says, “Now, it’s not usual. Yes, I was always worried for my family, I wanted to talk to kids—but nothing like now.
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