Musicians in Daughters of Donbas perform in London on Jan. 27.Betty Laura Zapata/The Globe and Mail
Lisa slowly walked up the stairs to the stage in a small theatre in London and gripped the microphone tightly. She hoped she would get through the story of her life as a teenager in wartime Ukraine without crying, but after a few lines she was in tears.
She’s a 19-year-old musician from Mariupol whose family managed to escape the Russian occupation and the brutality of the filtration camps, where thousands of civilians were detained by soldiers and interrogated for weeks. She still lives in fear and asked that her last name not be published to spare her relatives in Russia from possible reprisals.
She never dreamed she’d be on stage telling strangers in another country about how she was deported to Russia at the age of 15.
And yet here she was in Britain, beginning a multicity tour with a musical ensemble called Daughters of Donbas, led by Ukrainian-Canadian singer-songwriter Marichka Marczyk, who performs under her first name.
Lisa and Marichka met through friends in the music world. Lisa hopes to join for as much of the tour as possible, visas permitting.Betty Laura Zapata/The Globe and Mail
Marichka, who is also a medic in the Ukrainian military, founded the group last year to raise awareness about the 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been forcibly deported to Russia. Their show is called Songs of Stolen Children, and each performance is a mix of storytelling and singing.
“I want to create empathy around the world, and through the empathy, I want people to act, because it’s what Ukrainians need,” Marichka said in an interview.
On this Tuesday night, Lisa had to pause and collect herself as she started speaking before a rapt audience in Theatreship, a 100-seat venue in a renovated cargo boat moored near Canary Wharf in east London.
She quietly described the horrors she witnessed as the Russian army overran Mariupol in the spring of 2022. She will never forget the desperate mother of five whose husband was torn apart in a missile strike. She still sees the man cut down by shrapnel in front of her and “the bodies of soldiers who will remain forever younger than I am today.”
“But I’m standing here today, and that means that they did not succeed,” she said of the Russian occupiers.
“The dead ones are silent. That’s why I’m speaking. I’m not speaking for your pity. I’m speaking that the world has no right to look away, because if you look away this will happen next to your homes.”
In Lisa's performance, she described the horrors she witnessed as Russian troops invaded her city.Betty Laura Zapata/The Globe and Mail
In an interview before the performance, Lisa said that before Russia’s full-scale invasion, she lived like any other teenager – obsessed with David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney and dreaming of singing in a band.
“One day it’s pretty normal, the next day it’s all messed up like in a Mad Max,” she said.
Her family lived near the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, where a group of Ukrainian soldiers held out for weeks before finally surrendering the city’s last stronghold. She and her parents and her older brother were forced to pass through three filtration camps, where Russian soldiers checked their cellphones and strip searched them for any signs of disloyalty.
They were eventually deported to Taganrog, a Russian city just across the border. After a few months, they managed to escape to Estonia with the help of volunteers from a Ukrainian aid organization. Lisa’s parents and brother settled in Germany, but she headed to Kyiv to be with her boyfriend and pursue her singing.
Last summer, she met Marichka there through friends in the music world and Maria Pronina, a member of the group that helped spirit her family out of Russia.
Marichka, 49, grew up in Kyiv and moved to Toronto 12 years ago, just as Russian-backed rebels began their offensive in eastern Ukraine. She returned and volunteered with a battalion led by a former boyfriend. She trained as a medic and still heads to the front every few months, while also raising money for drones and other equipment through performances.
Last year she and Toronto music promoter Dan Rosenberg launched Daughters of Donbas. Mr. Rosenberg “was so moved by the fact of the amount of Ukrainian kids stolen, and he had an idea to create a musical project to raise an awareness around the world,” Marichka recalled.
They recruited four musicians – Canadians and Ukrainians – who play a variety of string instruments, including the bandura, a 65-stringed Ukrainian lute. At each stop on the tour, they invite local musicians to join in.
Marichka describes her first meeting with Lisa as 'very powerful.'Betty Laura Zapata/The Globe and Mail
When Marichka met Lisa, she discovered that the teenager could sing and play the ocarina, an ancient wind instrument. “It was a very powerful meeting. We realized, wow, we can make a big difference in the world,” she recalled.
Marichka wrote many of the group’s songs. During each performance she talks about abducted children and reads letters some of them wrote to Santa Claus while in Russia.
“Dear Santa. I don’t want thunder anymore. This kind of kill us,” wrote a three-year-old boy named Ilya.
Ironically, many of the letters were posted online in Russia and provided enough clues for Ukrainian investigators that several children were rescued and returned to their families.
The musical project seems to be resonating. After London, the Daughters will perform in Scotland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Estonia and in Toronto, Vancouver and Gabriola Island, B.C., next month.
Lisa will join them for as much of the tour as she can, visas permitting. The trip to England has already fulfilled two dreams: visiting the home of her favourite rock bands and flying in an airplane.
“It’s my first time travelling by airplane in my life,” she said with a smile. “We weren’t able to use airplanes in Mariupol. When I was growing up they closed the sky.”