Zelenskyy says Russian ‘fire superiority’ is ‘very much felt’ in the Donbas; Ten killed in rocket attack on Odesa | Ukraine live

By Gillian Joseph, Sky News presenter, and Nick Stylianou, Sky News producer, in Kyiv.

On the outskirts of Kyiv, Alla Samoilenko has no power or water. She lives next to the road Russian tanks charged down in the early days of the war, in their aborted attempt to take Ukraine’s capital. In the house she helped to build, she said that she was never going to leave, even as shells rained down overhead.

But we are not here to talk about her war, we are here to talk about her son: 27-year-old Ilia Samoilenko is one of the famous faces of the Azov Regiment, the defenders of the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol.

For months she was in daily contact with him while he was fighting back from the last outpost of the city.

We asked her about the siege and the tactical resistance of Ilya and his comrades.

“I’m not sure that I can explain it to you, because it’s still a secret” she said. “I think many things we will know exactly when they’re home”.

Ilya’s big beard, eyepatch and titanium hook on his right arm made him instantly recognisable across the world during the news conferences and media interviews. But Mrs Samoilenko showed us professional casting photos of a fresh-faced 8-year-old and his younger brother, separated by just over a year.

“They looked almost identical. And they were best friends,” Alla said.

She is a renowned casting director and her boys briefly flirted with the idea of following her into the industry. But the younger Samoilenko became very ill, unable to leave hospital, and Ilya became preoccupied with biomedical science as well as deeply passionate about history, the subject he later studied at university in Kyiv.

By 2015, he had signed up to the Azov – then a battalion – and was teaching combat medicine. But in 2017, while on a mine-clearing mission in the Donbas, a Russian shell exploded nearby, detonating the device he was holding.

“But he was still conscious, and was ordering his own medical evacuation,” Alla said.

Back to the current invasion, she remembered watching his final interviews as the end of the famous siege drew near. One, with Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan, is her favourite for how clear and direct her son was. She watched it again with us.

“It was absolutely crazy, in this interview he said they will probably be killed in a few hours. The next day I heard not from them, but from our local Facebook community who said that [the Russians] will start this ‘evacuation’.” She said “evacuation” with air quotes, after the many failed attempts to make safe passage for those wanting to escape.

Does she know where her son is now? She shook her head. She hasn’t heard from him since. A friend with another son in the Azov Regiment said that he’d seen “Gandalf” in Russian captivity in eastern Ukraine a few weeks ago. His beard, height and love of Tolkien earned him that nickname with his friends. But given he is one of the more high-profile soldiers, there is a chance he was taken to Russia.

She explained: “Two places are a possibility, one is Olenivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, another is with the Azov commanders in Lefortovo Prison, near Moscow in Russia, we don’t know exactly where.”

Mrs Samoilenko brought up the case of British-born fighters Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, captured in Mariupol and sentenced to death by Russian-backed separatists.

“So many messages from the Russian side about these British citizens – we are trying to understand what’s going on with this case and what we will happen with other soldiers, with Ukrainian soldiers, everything they do with them – it’s absolutely illegal. Our soldiers are not criminals. They are defenders. Defenders of their country.”

We asked if she has ever talked to him about the possibility of him not coming back. She said she brought it up only once. “I understood that he is ready for that.”

She pauses, her eyes now full of tears. “I haven’t cried for a long time.

“I keep it inside…I am working to keep it inside, that he is coming back. He’s coming back. He is coming back.”

She repeated it like a mantra until she was calm again.

Alla’s husband – Ilya’s stepfather – is in the territorial army but comes home for regular breaks. Four-year-old Marguerite rides her bright pink bike around the driveway. Life is trying to return to normal in Kyiv, but Ilya is never far from her mind. His childhood bedroom is sparse – a packet of cigarettes, a couple of bottles of alcohol and one camouflage jacket left on a hanger.

The rest of the rooms are strewn with toys, there is food on the kitchen table and there are cabinets stuffed with books. She is proud of the family home she has built.

“My daughter gives me so much energy for life, and I think I’m spending my time to prepare everything for his coming back.”

Alla grows vegetables and roses in her garden. When she is pulling up weeds, she said she imagines that she is removing the Russians from her country.

If only it were that easy.