In a modest two-bedroom house with two new bikes in the garage, Lev Ageyev lives with his grandmother Yulia.
In Mariupol, a Ukrainian industrial city, where their owners, 11-year-old Lev and his older brother Artyom, 13, reside, they are the envy of the other boys. But they value other things more than bikes. The honor belongs to the hand-signed photo portraits that are hung in the boys’ bedrooms. Their bicycles, which were presented to them after a tearful two-hour meeting last year, are both autographed by Sir Elton John and bear the message “I Love You.”.
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When Lev was 14 months old, he first met the singer in a Ukrainian orphanage where he and Artyom were placed after their HIV-positive, alcohol- and drug-dependent mother, Marina, was deemed unfit to care for them.
The infant’s radiant smile and blue eyes captivated Elton. At a press conference, he declared that because of their close relationship with David Furnish, they would adopt him. ‘Watching children like Lev smile is one of my most heartwarming things,’ he said. “He stole my heart,” she cries.
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But it didn’t work out like that. Due to both his advanced age (62 at the time) and President Viktor Yanukovych’s prohibition on gay adoption, Sir Elton’s objective was unsuccessful. But as evidenced by the release of his autobiography, Me, last week, the famous person never forgot about Lev. It contains the actor’s heartfelt account of how meeting Lev had a profound effect on his life, solidifying his decision to have children and resulting in the surrogate birth of his oldest son Zachary in December 2010. He claims that his name was Zachary Jackson Levon. Everyone assumes that his last name is a reference to a song that Bernie [Taupin] and I wrote, but they’re wrong; he’s actually named after Lev. He could do nothing, it was useless. Lev revealed to me who I am. He was an angel and a messenger. We realized Lev had fundamentally altered our lives while holding our infant in a hospital nursery.
Two years later, Elijah—now six—joined the family, completing Elton’s happiness because Zachary and Elijah, the multimillionaire parents, would provide their sons with a wealth of material comforts. They only have to worry about going to school and enjoying their family’s villa in the South of France during the holidays, not to mention mingling with royalty and famous people. However, the situations facing Lev and Artyom could not be more dissimilar. Their prospects were dim after being left in the Makiivka Children’s Home in a country with a lax adoption culture and where infants born with HIV are stigmatized.
Lev is HIV negative, but Artyom is, and he is being treated for his condition with medication. Yulia, the brothers’ paternal grandmother and legal guardian, speaks about how the brothers are thriving in her care for the first time this week. They have also maintained contact with Sir Elton, who has kept a close eye on them all, helping to temporarily rehouse them following the 2014 Ukrainian uprising and meeting them at that touching reunion.
Despite Yulia and Lev’s refusal to say whether they ever consider how different the boys’ lives might have been if Elton and David had been permitted to adopt, the family is wealthy in other ways. Although Lev doesn’t have a luxurious lifestyle, Yulia claims that Lev is content and surrounded by love. It is a happy ending after much suffering, even though it is not the happy ending that everyone had hoped for. Last year, there were tears when we first met Elton. We met Elton the person instead of the famous Elton. The boys were ecstatic to see him, but they also came to understand how much they cherished their own families.
“The guys support me and are my pillar of strength. ”. Despite my health, they are always there for me and make an effort to make me smile. There is love in my home, all around. Yulia is the first to admit that her home is modest: a two-bedroom apartment in a building covered in graffiti in Mariupol, a city in southeast Ukraine close to the Russian border.
The boys share one bedroom while Yulia, 66, and her 69-year-old husband Nikolai, who is bedridden due to his involvement in the cleanup after the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, use the other. There is a lack of cash. Their combined monthly income is a pitiful £400 despite receiving roughly £250 in state-funded childcare for the boys and modest pensions from Yulia, a former factory worker, and Nikolai. They use their love to make up for their lack of resources. During our hour-long video chat, Artyom stands nearby and Lev sits on his grandmother’s knee with his arm around her neck.
The family remembers the encounter that thrust them into the public eye, and the memories are met with smiles, laughter, and tears. The more animated of the two, Lev once vanished and then reappeared to proudly display his medals from a wrestling match for me. Lev still resembles the adorable kid who won Elton’s heart. In contrast to Artyom’s reserved demeanor, Lev is animated and enthusiastic. The teacher needs assistance keeping the class quiet due to Lev’s talkative and active personality. They both do well academically. Unlike Artyom, who speaks English fluently, Lev is a natural athlete. They are like most boys.
However, these boys come from a family that has been tragically affected by both drug abuse and HIV in a country where the former was on the rise when they were born. Both Marina, Yulia’s mother, and Sergey, her father, had the virus. After being found guilty of murder and receiving an 11-year sentence, Sergey killed a teenage girl. Due to this, the state decided to take custody of both boys and relocate them to Makiivka, a special facility for kids born to mothers who are HIV-positive near Donetsk. The boys were sent to this facility due to Marina’s alcohol and drug abuse and these circumstances. Lev and Elton got to know one another there. The Elena Pinchuk Foundation, a charity close to the artist, invited him, and his relationship with the toddler garnered widespread media attention.
Lev had stolen Elton’s heart, Elton declared in his hometown newspaper, and Yulia still has the newspaper article. Unfortunately, because Marina insisted on taking the boys home, the boys’ future remained uncertain as it became apparent that his desire for adoption would not be realized. That also did not work out. At 26, she passed away from tuberculosis in a Ukrainian hospital. Concerns about Yulia’s efforts to get custody arose around the same time that Sergey was given a second sentence for theft.
But the authorities didn’t realise how tenacious she was. After months of pleading, she finally became their guardian in 2011, when Lev was two and Artyom was four. She was then able to bring them both home from the orphanage. She remembers with tears in her eyes, “It was a happy day. ”. “I knew I could take care of them, even though I’m old, and I’ve shown that I can. The centre of my life and my husband’s life is our family. ‘. That much is evident. Despite being in poor health, Nikolai still feels a strong emotional connection to his grandsons and even interrupted our interview to tease them.
Yulia explains that he must walk against the wall because of a heart condition. He visited Chornobyl in 1986, experienced extremely high radiation levels, and has struggled ever since. ‘. There are medical issues with her grandchildren as well. Along with Artyom’s HIV, both have been identified as having heart arrhythmia, forcing them to discontinue their favorite pastimes temporarily. Although Lev’s condition is significantly worse than Artyom’s, both patients are listed at the hospital and will undergo additional testing and a thorough examination at the end of this month. They can’t run around while they wait, which is problematic. Yulia reassured me, “It’s not severe and can be cured.
The family has experienced a variety of problems over the years. Insurgent separatists and local police engaged in skirmishes in 2014 with the help of Ukrainian government forces. The Pinchuk Foundation led a rescue effort to evacuate them and other families to Kyiv until the fighting ceased after pro-Russian forces took control of Mariupol. In his memoir, Elton wrote, “When the Russians invaded Ukraine, we worked with a charity to get them to Kyiv. ”. Before it was determined that they could safely return home, the family spent three months residing in Kyiv.
We were happy to be safe because they found us a flat in Kyiv, Yulia continues. Since people believed that Russian tanks were about to attack the city, Mariupol was afraid’. In addition to receiving financial aid from the group, Yulia relied on them to give her family extras. She says, “There is a fund that helps us; they bought new furniture for our apartment and gave us air conditioning. ”. “It’s plausible, but we’ve never been told it came straight from Elton. ‘.
The Ageyevs met Sir Elton and David in Kyiv last year and were moved by the experience, thanks to the charity. But disaster was coming. Sergey, the father of the boys, passed away from a brain haemorrhage just as Yulia was about to board a plane to meet her grandsons. Yulia remembers, her voice quivering with emotion, “Sergey had a haemorrhage a few years ago and had lived with it, but it took his life. ”. The boys found it difficult because they had grown close recently — he used to take them fishing, and you couldn’t tell them apart. They struggled to fall asleep for months. Lev does not recall his mother because she died while he was still in the orphanage. They had now lost both of the people who had given them life’.
It gave a gloomy backdrop to what might have been a pleasant encounter with Sir Elton. He sobbed, and we hugged after I broke the news to him. He also gave the boys hugs, which were fatherly, Yulia recollects. Although he is well-known, I didn’t expect him to feel this way because I thought he was beautiful. There were no reporters or observers, so that was entirely normal. There was just Elton, David, and the interpreter. He urged the boys to pick up English, and when he asked if they had any needs, the boys admitted they shared a bicycle. He sent them two new sports bicycles after promising to fix them. These were something we could only afford. In light of this, we are grateful. ‘.
The boys had gifts for Elton, including pictures for him to return to the UK and a heart-shaped box covered in shells they had initially bought as a present for their grandmother while on vacation in Danzig. Lev thought of the box because the seashells reminded him of his home near the water when they were unsure what to give Elton as a gift after learning they would be travelling to Kyiv. He liked it. ‘. Lev’s eyes sparkled when I questioned him about how it felt to see Elton after so many years.
“Beforehand, I was a little nervous, but once we met, I realised everything was OK,” he says. He was a pleasant man. ‘. Since then, they have not seen their well-known friend, but both boys hope that they will meet Elton’s family as their English skills advance. I tell the kids that Lev has two half-brothers in England, and Lev wants to see them, Yulia says.
Both boys must focus on their schoolwork, but we have invited Elton over and hope he will do the same for us. Please take a look at what the future has in store’. There is a brighter future ahead than anyone could have imagined all those years ago.
