Crimean journalist whose parents died under occupation: "Now I have to prove in court that they are dead"

Crimean journalist Maria Pedorenko, whose parents died on the occupied peninsula, spoke about the problems she faced while trying to obtain their death certificates.

Her story was reported by Suspilne.

Maria explained that her parents had died when she was a child. Her own mother died of cancer when Maria was nearly three years old. She did not know her father at all. As a child, she was told that he was a Serb and died in the early 1990s during the war in what used to be Yugoslavia.

Journalist Maria Pedorenko/Photo by Suspilne

"I was not left without guardianship: I lived with the family of my aunt and uncle, who took me from Kherson to Crimea as my mother was fighting for her life. De jure, I was an orphan with my uncle for a guardian; de facto, I had a full family and people whom I called Mom and Dad all my life," the journalist recalls.

Her foster father died in 2020 under occupation. Maria only managed to visit his grave six months after the funeral.

The foster mother passed away six months after the start of the full-scale invasion. Like her biological mother, Maria Pedorenko's aunt died of cancer.

The journalist was in Crimea at the time and was able to bury her mother. The documents issued to her by various services in Crimea need to be verified in Ukraine.

Namely, this applies to two death certificates. However, as Maria Pedorenko notes, they remained in a drawer of her home in Crimea.

"I left them there because I didn't need another reminder of death," Maria explains.

She notes that those certificates can be verified at a civil registration office by their place of residence.

"But even the state authorities note that the documents issued during the occupation have no legal force, and the CSRB (Civil Status Registration Bodies – Ed.) will not accept them," the media worker adds.

According to her, there is a way out in this situation: to go to court to officially establish the fact of death. This requires paying a court fee, collecting photo and video evidence of the graves, testimonies from people who can confirm the time and place of the deaths.

"I still haven't gone to the CSRB. My official reason is that I don't have time. The real reason is that I have no moral strength. I don't want to prove to anyone that my parents are really dead. I don't want to collect evidence from eyewitnesses or ask acquaintances in Crimea to take photos of the graves. I do not want to confirm their deaths through court as demanded by the Civil Procedure Code. I don't want to be burying them a second time, even on paper. At least for now," said Maria Pedorenko.

Finally, she suggested that perhaps it makes sense to wait and re-issue these documents in the de-occupied Crimea.