Police officer from Kharkiv region received an award at the competition of the International Association of Women Police Officers (IAWP)
Inspector of the investigative department of the Kupyansk district police department of the GUNP in Kharkiv region Maria Yatsenko was recognized as the winner in the nomination “Courage”.
Mother of many children Maria Yatsenko is not afraid to work in one of the most dangerous areas of the Kharkiv region and performs her duties under enemy shelling, which does not subside for a day.
Maria Yatsenko was born in Kharkiv. She devoted 23 years of service in the police to the investigation, where she went from junior lieutenant to police lieutenant colonel. The police met the war in her hometown. Together with their three children, they settled in the basement of the house.
“As the air raids on the city began, the question arose whether it was necessary to immediately protect the children so that I could continue to work. At the beginning of March, we allowed the management to evacuate families. On March 3, I took my whole family to the city of Dnipro. This was the only direction where there was no congestion. Already on the way they decided the question of where they would live. Fortunately, there were friends who said that you can stay with them,” the woman says.
Then in Kharkiv almost all residents were constantly in shelters, shops did not work, problems with products began. Maria's relatives from the Dnieper loaded her car with medicine, food, animal feed. All this she brought to Kharkiv residents. Helping compatriots then became a daily matter for the police. She was approached by acquaintances, friends, strangers - she tried to help everyone.
“The city seemed empty. But you come to some house, call 5-6 people, and 50 more come to you. And so they became more, more, more. So it was until the shops started working, life improved. Everyone was doing everything they could — finding food, supporting each other. There are a lot of elderly people left. There were also those that had to be taken out of the city,” Maria recalls.
The most exciting for the police was the evacuation of a premature baby, who was born a few days before the invasion of the Russians. A mother with a child without light and water were in the basement of a maternity hospital in the Industrial District.
“I was approached by a woman asking for help. Doctors told everyone to leave as soon as possible, so the young mother was in despair. I told her I was able to find a child seat and she found it. When I saw this child, she was like a doll. She was 5 weeks old, she weighed just over one and a half kilograms. This is such a baby that could not even be fastened to a child seat at all. I was all afraid that somewhere now we would fly into some hole, I was worried to make it to curfew. I have never carried children like that at all. Everything ended well, so the young mother then wrote, dropped photos of the baby,” says the police officer.
Maria took the child and mother to the city of Nikopol, where her family lived.
After the de-occupation in September 2022 of Kharkiv region, in particular Kupyansk district, Maria temporarily held the position of chief of the investigative department in the police unit in Velykyi Burluk village. The task of law enforcement officers was to register statements, reports of local residents who suffered as a result of the military aggression of the Russian Federation:
“In particular, these were people who were subjected to torture, from which Russian servicemen took property. Our task was to carry out investigative actions as much as possible and to direct these proceedings under investigation to the SBU.”
Also, assistance was provided to local residents in household issues that might arise in them, since the deoccupied villages had no light, communication, heating, food at all. The policemen independently removed the victims, who came under fire and were wounded.
“Even emergency medical care could not reach these victims, and the head of the unit himself transported the wounded. We worked in this mode together with the military,” says the police officer.
Maria directly participated in the exhumation of bodies from the mass burial site in Izyum. She inspected the graves, removed the bodies, examined them.
For the past eight months, the police officer has been working in the Kupyansk district police department. She deals with missing persons under special circumstances, search and prosecution of collaborators.
Maria Yatsenko is always in the hottest places of Kharkiv region, where she bravely performs police tasks. She is not afraid of shelling or huge amounts of work, because she believes that victory is for Ukraine.
National Police of Ukraine
