DISPATCH FROM UKRAINE
A mother’s 312-day search for the loved ones stolen by Russia
Ten months since her husband and daughter were last seen, Tanya Lyakh is running into hostility, delays and accusations of betrayal in her quest to find them
Tanya Lyakh, right, has clutched at every hope that she might be reunited with her daughter, Diana, since she vanished last October
The Times
The day the Russians took her daughter is burnt into Tanya Lyakh’s memory. Diana, a girl with strawberry-blonde hair, was only 12 when four soldiers came to the family’s small country cottage, home to Tanya, Anatoliy and their eight children.
They demanded Anatoliy drive them to the supermarket in Beryslav, the nearest town. “Bring the little one,” they told the farmer in rural Kherson, “to let her catch some air”.
She was bundled into her father’s little red Lada Riva and set off with the soldiers last October. It would be the last time Tanya saw her child or her husband. Not long after the car snaked off through fields, shells began to fall near the family home, which lay in a bitterly contested part