Ukrainian director and TV presenter Yevhen Synelnikov met with children whose parents died in the war

Recently, three dreamers became the heroes of the social project "Make a Dream Come True" by 1+1 Media. They personally met their idol, Yevhen Synelnikov, director, TV presenter, and founder of original YouTube projects.

Eight-year-olds Valeria Petrova and Bogdan Makarenko, along with nine-year-old Yana Onishchenko, are true travel enthusiasts and wards of the Children of Heroes Foundation. Their parents are among those who have been involved in the resistance to Russian aggression since 2014.

In 2022, Valeria's family was forced to flee their home in the city of Schyastya in the Luhansk region due to enemy advances. Her father, Pavlo Petrov, was a soldier in the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Still, on the second day of the invasion, he was killed while performing a combat mission, evacuating his comrades who were breaking out of the encirclement. It was only 30 months later that the family received official confirmation of his death.

Bogdan Makarenko left his hometown of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, in the early days of the full-scale war. His father, Oleksandr, fought his last fatal battle in March 2022 during the liberation of Makariv. Yana's father, Vitaliy, was a reconnaissance soldier who served in the 143rd Brigade. However, on February 5, 2024, he went missing during shelling of a position in the Donetsk region. According to available information, he is presumed dead.

The dreamers, participants in the "Make a Dream Come True" project, decided to follow in their parents' footsteps and, with the start of the big war, began to discover Ukraine for themselves. Nikita Dobrynin, mentor of the initiative and host of "Closer to the Stars" on TET, decided to support them in this:

"This is a unique episode, because today we have three children with us for the first time. They have various hobbies — IT, programming, snorkeling, jiu-jitsu, language learning — but at the same time, they have clear and cool dreams of traveling. When we met, I was impressed by how clearly they knew what they wanted at their age. This is very important when you have dreams."

Nikita invited the children to the Supiy Nature Research Center, where they met Yevhen Synelnikov and even tried kayaking.

"Children are our everything. I am glad that, despite the circumstances, they are open-minded. We went kayaking together, ate kulish according to a recipe from the poem "Aeneid," and it was heartfelt. We must do everything possible to ensure that our children have a bright future, because they deserve it," said Yevhen.

"I was thrilled to meet Yevhen because I follow his YouTube channel and watch a new episode almost every evening," Valeria shared her emotions. In the future, Valeria wants to conquer all the highest peaks of Ukraine with her mother in memory of her father.

You can learn more about the realization of this dream in the video on the official pages of 1+1 Media on Instagram and Facebook, as well as this Sunday morning, October 12, in the new episode of "Closer to the Stars" on the TET TV channel.

We remind you that earlier, 18-year-old Sofia Ruschits met her favorite actor, Oleksandr Rudynskyi, on the set of the new original series "Tykha Nava" from Kyivstar TV. For more details, follow the link.