How we gave Ukrainian orphans a visit from Santa.
St. Nicholas, the Ukrainian Santa, is popular for his good deeds and for always helping kids in need. Tania and Nastia went to an orphanage to create a holiday for kids.
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By: DeeDee
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For most children, attention from adults is a usual part of life.
But not for the ones we visited.
Many orphans – or those without available parents – don’t get it very often: only from their caregivers or on holidays, like St. Nicholas Day, when volunteers bring gifts and spend some time with them.
So we decided to give these children a bit of love and care, even for a moment: we became St. Nicholas for them.
St. Nicholas Day, celebrated on December 6, is a highly-anticipated day for Ukrainian children. Many of them are forced to grow up early amid the cruelty of war: explosions, air-raid sirens, and rare phone calls with their parents who went to the frontline. As of the end of 2025, about 61,000 children were left orphaned due to the Russian war. A lot of kids lose their parents in action at the frontline, under shelling, or in Russian captivity.
So finding presents brought by St. Nicholas preserves at least a small bit of real childhood magic and the celebration they so deeply deserve. It is evidence that the most important light is something Russia will never be able to take away: the light of support, love, and helping one another.
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Of the tens of thousands of children orphaned by the war, relatives take care of the child whose parents were killed. But not everyone is lucky. About 4,000 children are left in institutional arrangements, where they are known as ‘children deprived of parental care.’
Life in institutions like boarding schools, orphanages, and children’s shelters often isolates kids from society. They eat whatever they are given, and don’t have pocket money for non-essentials.
But the war has brought a good tradition into the life of many Ukrainians — donating whatever money they have left to the army or to helping those who are suffering.
This has become so deeply rooted among Ukrainians that it was nearly impossible to find an orphanage that would accept us as volunteers for the holiday. Most were already overwhelmed with people wanting to bring presents and visit the kids on St. Nicholas Day.
The center we visited was also flooded with gifts and sweets, but one need still hadn’t been met: fuel.
At first glance, diesel is a very strange present, especially for kids. But it is incredibly necessary given this winter and the Russian attacks. To ensure electricity during critical moments, the center relies on generators that require large fuel supplies. That’s how our team brought light to the children — both literally and figuratively.
The center often hosts evacuated children from the frontline territories — parents fled without their children, were killed in shelling, or went missing. That’s why now they are really careful about sharing their name or location publicly, so as to not become another target in a Russian attack. As of 2023, 22 facilities for children without parental care were targeted. That number has likely grown, but new numbers remain unrecorded.
I vividly remember a small lecture in elementary school about the holiday of St. Nicholas, a kind wizard who put his life on the line to help children in need, especially orphans. According to legend, St. Nicholas grew up helping others. Since childhood, he quietly shared goods and clothes from his house, sneaking out at night and leaving them at the doors of people in need.
After his death, he was offered the chance to make one wish for all his deeds.
St. Nicholas chose to have one night a year when he can return and give children presents. This night is December 6, a night when children all over Ukraine (and in many other European countries) peek under their pillows to find presents (or a birch rod if they behaved badly during the year).
I kept believing in St. Nicholas throughout my entire childhood. The legend moved me and I desperately wanted to meet him.
When I was about 8 years old, I even fell asleep in a closet while on watch for him. Who was this person, I wondered? Unfortunately I could not stay awake while waiting to peek at this wizard through the door gap. Despite not seeing him, he always brought me the presents I asked for in my letters…
Now we wanted to bring winter magic to other kids. To make our gift, diesel, less strange, we also prepared a fun TikTok lesson for the children – both to spend time together and to remind them about safety.
Tania turned into St. Nicholas to assist.
I was anxious before we started the lesson: what if the children were bored or didn’t want to talk to us? However, I didn’t have time to panic as six children, aged 6 to 15, entered the room, each looking curious and excited.
Children figured out that St. Nicholas was fake the second they walked in. Smoking cigarettes beforehand to make Tania’s voice deeper and raspier did not help either. Kids used every excuse to make Tania come clean.
“Wait a second,” said Tania before we entered the building with the kids, “I need a chewing gum so that kids don’t smell cigarettes from me.”
“I’m Tania,” my colleague finally said, mistakenly, when introducing herself.
From that moment on, the children called her Tania-Nicholas.
I haven’t felt the magic of the winter holidays for a long time. I think it’s because I’m not a child anymore. The war made me a bit numb to any joy. Christmas turned into just another occasion to spend time with my family. But remembering what it meant for me as a child makes me sad that lots of Ukrainian children lost this magic far sooner.
One of my first jobs was tutoring groups of children. To my question about what they wished for before St. Nicholas, most children answered:
“I want my dad to return home from war,”
“I want to see Ukraine again,”
“I want to see my friends who had to flee abroad,”
“I want this war to stop.”
Children at the care center dream of more basic things, which hold deeper meaning for them and help them feel like their peers who have families — they want trendy items, phones, and sneakers.
Ukraine is currently undergoing a deinstitutionalization reform from 2017 — a transition from residential institutions to family-based care for children without parental care.
Children at the center we attended have the opportunity to grow up in conditions close to those of a real family: they visit a regular school and socialize there, have kitchen and cleaning duty schedules, help caregivers with grocery shopping, and have free time and their own hobbies, which prepare them for independent living.
The boys at the center really enjoy playing the video game PUBG. They told me that if they were bloggers, their TikTok accounts would be full of streams and videos about this game. One girl said she would like to learn more about doing makeup.
The lesson went much better than I feared it might go. It was heart-warming to return to lessons at last, as I get nostalgic about my tutoring job. The children were great — fooling around, making jokes, actively opening up and sharing their thoughts.
The time spent together made me want to hug each and every one of them.
When the lesson was over, children took Tania’s costume and ran around with the accessories — one in a wig, another in a beard, and the third one in the cape. Their eyes lit up and they had smiles from ear to ear.
Now only six children remain in the center: others were either adopted, fostered or taken back by their relatives.
Those left now have one more wish for the holiday season: being the next to gain a family.
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NEWS OF THE DAY:
By Mariana Lastovyria
Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
U.S. PRESSURED UKRAINE TO GIVE UP DONETSK: The U.S. representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner pushed Zelenskyy via phone call to agree to ceding the Donetsk region to Russia, according to Axios. After Kushner and Witkoff met with Putin, the terms of the peace plan delivered to Kyiv significantly worsened. However, Zelenskyy refused to surrender territory, despite Trump’s pressure.
The Donetsk region holds a strategic role due to the defense lines and fortifications that Ukraine has built up since 2014, ceding these to Russia would make occupying Ukrainian territory much easier.
TRUMP’S PEACE DEAL IS CLOSE TO COLLAPSE: Zelenskyy has said that Kyiv has no obligation to give up its territory, putting Trump’s peace deal on the verge of breaking apart, according to The Telegraph. Today, Ukraine plans to send Washington its own peace deal proposal, which the EU has backed.
Territorial swap disputes and security guarantees are still the main reasons Zelenskyy and Trump cannot reach an agreement. The White House continues to pressure Ukraine’s president into accepting the Trump administration’s 20-point peace plan. The latest terms of the potential agreement are not yet known, as Washington has threatened to end support for Kyiv if they are leaked.
JAPAN REFUSED TO TRANSFER RUSSIAN ASSETS TO KYIV: Japan, which had $30 billion in frozen Russian assets, has declined to join the EU’s initiative to use Russian frozen assets to financially support Ukraine, citing legal constraints. The push to encourage countries from outside the EU to join the EU’s initiative is an attempt to mitigate the damage that using frozen Russian assets could do to the Euro and to share risk if Russia tries to retaliate. However, Politico has claimed that Japan is reluctant to move from Washington’s position.
Sourcing financial backing for Ukraine is crucial, as Ukraine may exhaust its financial resources as early as the beginning of 2026.
DOG OF WAR:
This amusing pup with fluffy ears was begging for Mariana’s steak when she went with her parents to the cafe. She fed him a huge part of the meat but he asked for more with his pitiful eyes:(
Stay safe out there!
Best,
Nastia
 | A guest post by
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Lovely story. 💙💛
I give to your Tip Jar periodically, more often than I can comfortably afford. That’s because the work you do, and the stories you write educate me about what it’s like to live and work in a country at war. After today’s story reminded me about how this winter will be particularly difficult and dangerously cold, I donated again. Thank you, Counteroffensive journalists, and especially to Tim Mak, whose writing surpasses what I read every day in the New York Times.