Fallen soldier becomes father via frozen sperm

Lyudmila’s story of fulfilling a shared dream after her husband's death is a tale of love stronger than war — and of new life being born in the face of tragedy.

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KYIV, Ukraine — A young couple was sitting in their flat’s kitchen when suddenly the woman said to the man: “You will die, but I want you to know that we’ll still have two children.” The man hugged her and replied that everything would work out for them.

Lyudmila woke from that warm, loving embrace. It was just a dream, and when she rose, it was the day of her embryo transfer. The man from the dream, her love, had already fallen on the frontlines, and she was going to have his child.

A positive pregnancy test for Lyudmila’s second child with Serhii, pictured in front of his photograph. Photo from Lyudmila.

Ukraine is facing a catastrophically low birth rate. Russia’s military aggression has triggered an outflow of women from the country. Many of those who stay in Ukraine and are ready to have children are waiting for their husbands to return from the front.

This demographic crisis is not unique to Ukraine; 71% of the world’s population lives in countries or territories with a fertility rate below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman. This means that in the future, these nations will be unable to maintain their population sizes without attracting immigrants. Furthermore, this trend could lead to an aging population, labor shortages, and economic decline.

But when a nation faces the consequences of war, preserving its demographic composition is no longer a matter of statistics but a genuine struggle for the future. Ukraine is facing on a massive scale what would have been isolated cases in peacetime: women who want to conceive children after the death of their husbands and who encounter legal obstacles in doing so.

The current Civil Code says that if a couple wasn’t officially married, the law doesn’t automatically give the common-law wife rights to her late partner’s reproductive material in the event of his passing. Fertility clinics are simply afraid to perform IVF using a deceased unmarried man’s sperm. This complete lack of clear laws on posthumous reproduction forces Ukrainian courts to solve deep ethical and legal dilemmas on their own.

Serhii was born in Kryvyi Rih, a city located in central-southern Ukraine. He loved to draw from childhood, and this passion grew into a career as a designer. He loved life, Liudmyla said, and he was an extraordinary person, drawn to everything new. He loved the sea and held a skipper’s license. Because of this love, he earned in the army the nickname “Moryak’’ — “sailor” in Ukrainian.

He was passionate about martial arts. Before the war, he worked as a coach at a preschool for children with developmental disabilities. “He believed that sports and attention would help these children recover,” recalled Lyudmila.

Serhii had always wanted a large family, and he was surprised when he met Lyudmila, who already had four children from a previous marriage. It was then that he realized all his wishes were coming true.

Lyudmila met Serhii on September 7, 2022, on Tinder. They texted each other for the next 10 months. When Serhii came to Kyiv for medical treatment, they met in person for the first time. Later, they would look back on that month as their “honeymoon,” because they never had the chance to get married and spend a real honeymoon together.

Lyudmila and Serhii with her two younger children. Photo from Lyudmila.

“It was an explosion of emotions,” Lyudmila recalled. “We immediately felt that we were meant for each other and wanted to be together forever.” And just two months later, they realized they wanted to have more kids. At the time, she was 42 and Serhii was 48. Because of their age and the war, the couple decided not to put their plans on hold.

“We understand that we’re old, but we won’t leave here without two children,” they declared at the clinic in Kyiv. The reproductive specialist listened to their request without hiding her surprise; usually people who come to the clinic dream of at least one child, but this couple wanted two — with a one-year difference. The doctor offered to freeze sperm, since this service was free for military personnel at the clinic’s initiative.

The couple agreed.

Two years later, in February 2024, the Ministry of Health launched a national program available to couples diagnosed with infertility. But at that time, even if Serhii and Lyudmila had wanted to take advantage of this program, they would not have been able to do so because the program is open only to people under the age of 40.

They agreed with the doctor that if they couldn’t conceive naturally within the first six months, they would turn to IVF. In Ukraine, IVF is available to both married couples and single women, though it is actually banned for single women in many other countries. Sperm and egg donation are completely legal and anonymous here, and so is surrogacy. In fact, surrogacy is a major reason for why so many foreigners used to come to Ukraine before the war, and some even continue to do so now.

Lyudmila recalls traveling to the Donetsk region in February to visit Serhii and “catch” her ovulation window. The weather forecast for that month predicted a severe blizzard, and several roads were already closed.

“I reassured Serhii that I’d manage to slip through before the storm hit,” she recalled. “And that’s exactly what happened. I arrived just two hours before the blizzard started.”

On their fifth month of trying, they successfully conceived.

When Lyudmila found out they were having a girl, she immediately told Serhii that he “owed” her a son. Serhii felt guilty for being at war instead of being with his family. During that time, Lyudmila’s children had come to love Serhiy, and he had come to love them.

Serhii joined the army at a young age; he was part of one of the first cohorts of the newly independent Ukrainian army, and he even took part in international exercises in the Netherlands.

“I think he knew his whole life that a full-scale war was coming. He was preparing for it,” Lyudmyla said.

At first, he served in reconnaissance in areas where very fierce battles were taking place. After he started dating Lyudmila, he transferred to the unmanned systems unit. Lyudmila noted that, according to his words, it was a “relatively safe field.”

Lyudmila with her older children on Vyshyvanka Day. Her older daughter is holding baby Miia—Lyudmila and Serhii’s daughter. A photo of Serhii sits on the shelf in the background. Photo from Lyudmila.

He really wanted to be there for the birth and planned his vacation from the military so he could be by his beloved’s side during the postpartum period.

On August 30, 2024, a month before their daughter’s birth, Serhii fell in battle.

Lyudmila was devastated. She tracked down the yacht on which Serhii had trained in Greece and fulfilled her husband’s final wish—to have his ashes scattered over the sea.

“Serhii wanted to change his last name to his call sign, ‘Moryak,’ because his father who gave him [his] surname had defected to Russia and he wanted to start his own family with his own last name.” Lyudmila said. Eventually, Lyudmila would fulfill this wish: she changed her and her kids’ last names to Moryak.

Mural depicting Serhii, featuring the sea and a sailing yacht. Photo from Lyudmila.

Before giving birth, Lyudmila met with her fertility specialist. By that time, she had become much more than just a doctor to Lyudmila. She was one of the first people to reach out to her after Serhii’s death. During the meeting, Lyudmila cried uncontrollably and asked various questions, but the main thing she asked the doctor was not to dispose of Serhii’s biological material.

Her concerns were not unfounded. In November 2023, Zelenskyy signed Law No. 3496, under which, in the event of a servicemember’s death, the clinic is required to dispose of the deceased’s reproductive cells. This decision caused a stir, garnered immense public attention, and in early March 2024 the president reversed via another bill, No. 10448, which guaranteed military personnel the right to biological parenthood even after death.

Mia was born on September 28, 2024. She was greeted at the maternity ward by Serhii’s colleagues, with whom he had worked even before joining the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

During the first few months, Lyudmila was supported by her husband’s comrades and her own family. “The daily routine really helped me cope with the loss, because I had to order clothes, shoes, and sports uniforms for the kids and get them ready for school,” she said.

However, their routine was disrupted by their first challenge: how to officially register Mia, since the couple was not legally married. The government still hasn’t created a clear process for registering a baby whose father died long before conception. Under outdated rules, a man is automatically listed as the father only if the child is born within 300 days of his death. Lyudmila went through the paternity recognition process for nearly a year.

In April 2025, Lyudmila went to the clinic to discuss her plan to have a second child with Serhii. She felt she was ready for it.

The doctor told her they couldn’t do it, since Ukraine lacks legislation that clarifies what to do in cases where a couple wasn’t married.

Even though Lyudmila had a notarized power of attorney authorizing the use of the biomaterial, she had to fight for that right. Armed with the power of attorney from Serhii and the agreement they signed with the clinic when he was alive, she and her lawyer filed a lawsuit. The trial lasted half a year.

Serhii’s mother even had to be brought into the proceedings. She testified that she wouldn’t mind having more heirs. “I knew that even if I won, there was no guarantee that I’d be able to get pregnant,” Lyudmila recalled. She was already 44 years old at the time.

She recalls that Sergei’s power of attorney included the phrase: “I agree to have children with her even after my death.” At the time those words sent a chill down Lyudmila’s spine, but that was precisely what helped her win the case.

Lyudmila told only her daughter and a few of her closest friends that she had decided to get pregnant a second time. “I’m making a difficult decision; I didn’t need to hear anyone’s opinion, let alone have them try to talk me out of it.”

On December 11, 2025, Lyudmila asked her close friends to look after her younger daughter. She went by herself for an embryo transfer. “I knew it might not work out for me. IVF is a gamble,” said Lyudmila. Deep down, she understood that she was doing what she had to do.

Now Lyudmila is grateful to the doctors and the clinic, because by following their advice to freeze Serhii’s sperm she is pregnant with her much-desired second child with him. Although they hadn’t considered using assisted reproductive technologies, they ended up being a lifesaver for her.

Lyudmila believes that legislation should be transparent and understandable so that women and men who sacrifice their health for their country have the opportunity to have children in the future.

“To be honest, I’m afraid of the phrasing that suggests I’ve defeated death — I haven’t defeated it. I understand that I have to keep living, and I’ll never be able to raise children the way Sergei would have.”

This August, Serhii will become a father again.

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THE LATEST NEWS AT THIS HOUR:

By: Oleksandra Poda

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

POLAND STRIPPED ZELENSKYY OF ITS HIGHEST STATE AWARD: On June 19, Polish President Karol Nawrocki revealed that Zelenskyy had been removed from the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor which former President Andrzej Duda awarded Zelenskyy in April 2023. This came after Zelenskyy gave a Ukrainian Armed Forces’ unit the honorary title of “Heroes of the UPA”. UPA was a nationalist organization that participated in the mass killing of the Polish civilian population from 1943 to 1945.

In response to Poland’s reaction, top ranking Ukrainian officials, like Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Sibiga and Head of the President’s Office Kirill Budanov, have declined or returned other awards granted by Poland.

Zelenskyy’s attendance at an international conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction is in doubt because of the conflict. The conference is scheduled to take place in Gdańsk, Poland on June 25-26.

HUNGARY LIFTS BAN ON UKRAINIAN MEDIA: On June 19, Hungarian Minister of Social Affairs and Culture Zoltán Tarr announced that the ban on blacklisted Ukrainian online publications would be lifted. In September 2025, the Orbán government banned 12 Ukrainian online portals in response to Kyiv’s decision to block access to several Hungarian publications accused of spreading Russian propaganda. Orbán called this a “symmetrical move.”

Tár underscored that the objective is to guarantee that the Ukrainian community and refugees in Hungary have dependable access to information in their native language, as well as moving towards normalizing bilateral relations between Budapest and Kyiv.

UKRAINE CUTS OFF CRIMEA: On the night of June 20, a road bridge across the Henichesk Strait in the Kherson region was struck by Ukrainian forces. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that the bridge is being used for enemy military logistics.

In the past two weeks, there have been several strikes on bridges connecting occupied mainland Ukrainian territory with Crimea. These strikes have damaged the strategic bridge in the Chongar area, the bridge between Henichesk and the Arabat Spit, and the Armiansk Bridge between Crimea and the mainland.

Russians are deploying pontoon bridges to restore connection. According to Navy spokesman Brovdi, Kyiv is seeking to isolate occupied Crimea. The strategy of cutting off Crimea and Russian troops from supplies of ammunition, fuel, and reinforcements is necessary to make it physically impossible for enemy forces to hold the peninsula. After two weeks of strikes on bridges and roads, Russian freight traffic along the main supply route has already fallen by 71%.

DOG OF WAR:

The downpour caught Baroness the dog and her owner right in the middle of their daily walk. The dog got completely soaked and begged to be picked up, but her owner refused because her paws were dirty. Despite her regal name, Baroness was left down.

Stay safe out there.

Best,
Kateryna.