Uliana ZAKHARANKA: ‘I think that I’m living my last days…’

On 6 January Uliana Zakharanka, mother of the ex-minister of interior Yury Zakharanka, missing since 1997, turned 85 years old. Narodnaya Volia took an interview with her.

‘I Think that I am living my last days’, said the missing general’s mother with tears. An ambulance keeps coming to my place days and nights. No matter how long I’ve been in hospital – nothing helps. My heart stops… I don’t even know whether I will survive the following night. I feel very bad, and such days are coming… On 7 February, right after my birthday, my elder son Valodzia died. On 10 February there died my husband. One by one. How shall I survive these days?

There’s no Yura either. Days and nights I cry, waiting for him. Try spending ten years without rest, without happiness in this mood… I don’t know how I managed to last and bear it so much time …

It’s good that I have a telephone at home – I can call an ambulance if my blood pressure runs high. Last week I had such a heartbeat that they weren’t able even to measure the blood pressure. I thought it was the end. By the way, the medics also said that ‘Your heart could break if some more time passed.’ They offered to put me in the hospital, but I don’t want to go there, as I‘ve just signed out. I ask them to come to my place and make an injection and they come.

I cannot understand why it happened to Yura… We did not steal anything anywhere. He did not have anything – neither cottages, nor anything else, but had such an unlucky fate… (…)

Dossier of Narodnaya Volia

In May this year there will turn ten years since the forced kidnap of a well-known political activist Yury Zakharanka. Top-rank state officials are suspected in relation to this kidnap.