“Mom Julia, are you waiting for a son from the front?”: a resident of Ulyanovsk “adopted” six soldiers

“Mama Yulia” is known to many soldiers on the front line. For her birthday, she asked her husband to give her an autoclave. And she began to cook stewed pork, pea porridge with smoked meats, and various pastes for the front-line soldiers.

“I correspond with many fighters, everyone who tries my homemade preparations consider it their duty to write to me, say “thank you,” Yulia shares with us. – Then we communicate with the guys using SMS. I ask what they need to bring? Somehow in the fall, the guys wrote that their colleague needed berets. They were only given shoes, the berets were quite good and stitched, but there was mud and mud there. The fighter stepped into the muddy soil, pulled out his leg, and the sole on the shoe came off. The guys wrote that they were sitting, thinking, how should he be? I promised to find out when a car would come to them in the near future. We talked about berets, but I forgot to ask the size of boots. The guys are already gone. I never call them back, they get in touch whenever possible.

Julia and her husband went to the store and bought the most popular sizes.

We took five pairs of shoes. Two pairs of sizes 42, and one pair each of sizes 43, 44 and 45. We thought that in such weather, berets would not be superfluous. In addition to shoes, they put stew, all sorts of sweets, wrote a letter. The parcel was nominal, the name of the fighter was written on the box. The nearest car went to their unit in just a week. And 4 days later the phone rang. The guy introduced himself: “I am Sasha.” I realized that this is the same guy who was without shoes. I ask: “Well, at least one of the berets came up?” It turned out that he has a size 43. I suggested that he keep another pair of size 44s to wear in cold weather with woolen socks, and give the rest to the guys. Sasha said that he did.

As Julia says, since then she and Sasha began to correspond.

– I asked him: “Maybe I can send you cigarettes?” He replied that he did not smoke. Many of them in the unit did not smoke. They quit because there were simply no cigarettes. When winter began, I sent Sasha warm thermal underwear, knitted a vest, three-fingered sniper gloves, a balaclava, and socks. Sent another fleece balaclava.

In addition to Alexander, Yulia has five more ward fighters.

– Yes, I have six “sons” at the front. These are the guys who do not receive packages from home or go for a very, very long time. They are written in my phone like this: Seryoga and further, relatively speaking, 46, Yura-44. I know in which department, in which platoon, in which regiment they are fighting.

Yulia and her husband don’t have their own car. She sends parcels to her “sons” through coordinators. One of the messengers is Maxim Davydov with the call sign “Postman”. He is engaged in business, he has his own taxi fleet. But with the beginning of the special operation, he began to personally deliver letters and parcels to the fighters “by ribbon”.

“Knowing which route he is taking, I ask him to grab packages for his boys. All parcels always reach the addressees, not a single one has been lost yet.

What is the reaction of the fighters?

One of the boys didn’t expect to receive the parcel at all. When I asked the coordinator who I communicate with, how is my Yurok? He said: “Having learned about the parcel, he went to cry in the forest belt.”

When the fighters are given a short vacation, they try to drop in on “Mama Yulia”.

One came to me at the end of January. There was a knock on the door, I open it – there is a two-meter bearded uncle, my Sergey. The second managed to jump in only for two minutes. His own brother was also mobilized, he is fighting, his mother was left alone.

– Are your wards all from Ulyanovsk?

– Everyone is local, only one guy from Perm. Who will send him a package from the distant Urals to Ukraine? And how long will she go? This guy is a volunteer, first he fought in the Pyatnashka battalion, then he was assigned to ours, in the 31st brigade.

The other day Sasha came to Yulia. The touching scene was filmed by local television journalists. The video went viral on social media.

“I never expected to see Sasha. My great friend Maxim with the call sign “Postman” said that he would come to me on Friday, I promised to be at home. I called the intercom. I also thought that it took him so long to rise? I open the door, Maxim immediately asks: “Mom Julia, are you expecting a son from the front?” I look, there is a guy with flowers. In my balaclava, and the eyes in the slit are Sasha’s. I recognized him from a photo he sent me earlier. And then I burst into tears. I knew all his history by correspondence. I started to take off Sasha’s balaclava, and then the camera was right there, they shouted to me: “It’s impossible, it’s impossible.” At first I thought it was a 40-year-old man. And the guy is 27 years old, due to the fact that the balaclava tightened the skin – he had wrinkles around his eyes. The face is all weathered.

Julia says that they began to interview her, and she was overwhelmed with emotions, tears kept flowing and flowing.

I was crying, I couldn’t stop. Sasha took my hand to calm me down. I started crying even more. The boy’s hands were all rough and cracked. She sat and fingered his fingers.

– How did Sasha become an orphan at the age of 15?

– I don’t know what happened to his parents, I didn’t ask him, “I didn’t get under the skin.” Custody over him was issued by his aunt – his dad’s cousin. Now she is 82 years old. Aunt Valya is a teacher of fine literature. This is felt by Sasha, the boy has a well-delivered speech, he is very courteous. When the lid fell on my leg, I had to bite my tongue. She said to Sasha: “Of course, in such cases, I don’t say, oh, what an opportunity, but I can swear, forgive me.” He says: “Yes, what do you mean, I hear such things in the trenches …” And then he screwed in a saying, so rare that I didn’t remember it verbatim. You generally need to follow this guy with Dahl’s dictionary. He has such interesting turns of speech. The front line and the front did not spoil him at all and did not harden him.

Sasha lives in the suburbs of Ulyanovsk. When he served in the army, he was a motorized rifleman. Then he graduated from a technical university, worked as an electronics engineer. When the special operation began, he was mobilized.

Two days later, he came to “Mama Yulia” for the whole day.

We sat at the table, talked a lot. Sasha found a common language with both my husband and our youngest son.

Yulia has three children, the eldest daughter is 30 years old, the middle daughter is 20, she followed in the footsteps of her mother, she wants to be a doctor, after college she will enter the military medical academy. Yulia’s youngest son is seven years old.

– Sasha, except for Aunt Valya, has no one. I asked if he had a girlfriend, he said: “I did, but then our paths diverged.” We spent three days with him, but there was a feeling that we had known each other all our lives. Orphans are often closed, “prickly”, not tactile, they cannot be hugged once again. But Sasha – no, he is, I would say, a grandmother.

And Sasha at “Mama Yulia” was very comfortable.

– I got very cold a few days ago, took a bath to warm up. Sasha just arrived. I made him tea with buns, turned on the movie. She went to the bathroom herself. I go out – he sleeps. I realized that he was comfortable with us, the guy relaxed. Then, embarrassed, he said that after hot tea he was exhausted from the cold.

Julia notes Alexander’s love of life and optimism.

– Even about the terrible everyday life on the front line, he talks with jokes. I noticed that the army uniform went at the seams. She said she needs to be updated. He began to assure that he would buy everything himself. But I couldn’t resist. I went and bought. He accepted it gratefully. But he never asked for anything. Came to visit us with two bags of products. Of course, I “raised on my hind legs”, issued: “We have decided, are you going to Aunt Yulia or to “Mama Yulia”?”

On the morning of February 26, Yulia and her family will see Alexander off to the front line.

– We will, as a native, wait for him and worry. I would love to see Yura too. Maxim promised to bring him when the guy was given a vacation. I always regretted that I only had three children. Now I have them – nine, six – at the front.