Two new bikes are stored in the garage of Lev Ageyev’s modest two-bedroom home, which he shares with his grandmother Yulia.
They are the pride and delight of their owners, 11-year-old Lev and his older brother Artyom, 13, and the envy of the other boys in Mariupol, the Ukrainian industrial city where they live.
The bikes, however, are not their most valued belongings. The honor belongs to the boys’ autographed picture portraits in their bedrooms. Each has the message ‘I Love You,’ and their signatory is Sir Elton John, who also provided their bicycles, which were given to them after an emotional two-hour meeting last year.
In Lev’s case, the term “reunion” is more apt: he first saw the singer as a 14-month-old in a Ukrainian orphanage, where he and Artyom were placed after their drug-and-alcohol-addicted, HIV-positive mother Marina was declared unfit to care for them.
The blue-eyed baby, with a radiant smile, captivated Elton. Their attachment was so strong that he said at a press conference that he and his spouse, David Furnish, would adopt him. ‘Seeing children like Lev… smiling… is one of the most affecting things for me,’ he said. ‘He took my heart,’ she says.
But, this was not to be. Sir Elton’s age (62 at the time) and now-deposed President Viktor Yanukovych’s ban on gay adoption meant his goal was dashed.
Yet the superstar never forgot Lev, as he made clear last week with the release of his autobiography, Me, in which he writes movingly of meeting Lev having a profound impact on his life, cementing his determination to become a father and resulting in the birth of eldest son Zachary via surrogacy in December 2010. He writes, “We called him Zachary Jackson Levon.” ‘Everyone thinks his surname comes from a song Bernie [Taupin] and I wrote, but they’re wrong: he’s named after Lev. He had no choice.
‘Lev was an angel, a messenger who taught me about myself. We were in a maternity ward, holding our son, knowing our lives had altered forever because of Lev.’
Elton’s joy was complete two years later with the arrival of Zachary’s brother Elijah, now six. Zachary and Elijah will have plenty of material luxuries as the sons of multi-millionaire parents; there are only schools and holidays in their parents’ villa in the South of France, not to mention mixing with celebrities and royalty.
However, Lev and Artyom’s situations could not be more dissimilar. Left behind in the Makiivka children’s home, their prospects were grim in a country with little adoption culture and where babies born in the shadow of HIV are stigmatized.
While Lev is not HIV positive, Artyom is, and his illness is being treated with medication.
Yulia, their paternal grandmother and legal guardian, recounts how the brothers are prospering in her care for the first time this week.
Furthermore, they have maintained contact with Sir Elton, who has kept a close check on them all, assisting in temporarily rehoming them in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolt and meeting up with them at that emotional reunion.
While Yulia and Lev remain tight-lipped about whether they ever consider how different the boys’ lives could be if Elton and David had been allowed to adopt, it’s evident the family is wealthy in other ways.
‘Lev may not have a luxurious existence, but he has a pleased one, surrounded by family and love,’ Yulia says. ‘That may not be the happy ending the world was hoping for, but it is still a happy ending, albeit a different one after much pain.
‘There were tears when we met Elton last year. We met Elton, the man, not Elton, the celebrity. The boys were overjoyed to see him, but they also realized how much they adored their own family.
‘The guys are my saviors; they assist me greatly. My health isn’t great, yet they’re always by my side, trying to make me feel better. My house is filled with love.’
Yulia would be the first to acknowledge that her home is modest: a two-bedroom flat in a graffiti-strewn block in Mariupol, a city in south-eastern Ukraine near the Russian border.
One bedroom is shared by the boys, while the other is used by Yulia, 66, and her 69-year-old husband Nikolai, who is bedridden due to his role in the cleanup following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Money is scarce. Yulia, a former factory worker, and Nikolai have modest pensions, and despite receiving state childcare for the boys of roughly £250 per month, their total monthly income is a pitiful £400.
What they lack in financial resources, they make up for in love. During our hour-long video call, Lev sits on his grandmother’s knee, his arm around her neck, with Artyom hovering beside him.
As the family recalls the meeting propelling them into the spotlight, there are smiles, laughter, and tears.
Lev, still recognizable as the lovely kid who captivated Elton’s heart, is the most animated of the two, disappearing at one point and reappearing to proudly show me the medals he won in a wrestling competition.
‘Artyom is quite timid and modest, but Lev is lively and enthusiastic – the teacher can’t keep him calm in class because he is so vocal and active,’ Yulia chuckles. ‘They’re both doing well in school. Artyom is fluent in English, while Lev is naturally gifted in athletics. They’re regular boys.’
But they are boys whose family history is marred by the twin tragedies of HIV and drug use in a country where the former was on the rise when they were born.
Their mother, Marina, and Yulia’s father, Sergey, had HIV. Marina’s alcohol and drug addiction, combined with Sergey’s murder conviction — he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for killing a teenage girl — resulted in both boys being placed in the care of the state and taken to Makiivka, a specialist home near Donetsk for children born to HIV-positive mothers.
Elton first met Lev there. He’d been invited by the Elena Pinchuk Foundation, an Aids charity close to the artist, and his bond with the toddler made international headlines.
Yulia still possesses a copy of her hometown newspaper, which featured Elton’s proclamation that Lev had stolen his heart.
Unfortunately, as it became evident that his desire for adoption would not be realized, the boys’ future remained uncertain since Marina insisted on bringing her boys home.
That, too, was not to be. She died of tuberculosis in a Ukrainian hospital less than a year later, at 26. Sergey was sentenced to prison again for theft around the same time, casting doubt on Yulia’s attempts to acquire custody.
The authorities, however, underestimated her great persistence. In 2011, when Lev was two and Artyom was four, she became their guardian after months of lobbying, eventually able to bring them both home from the orphanage. ‘It was a pleased day,’ she recalls, her eyes welling up with tears.
‘Even though I am an elderly person, I knew I could look after them — and I have proven that I can. Me and my husband’s lives revolve around our children.’
That much is obvious. Despite his terrible health, Nikolai maintains an emotional bond with his grandsons, appearing briefly during our interview to tease them about our conversation.
‘He has a heart issue and has to walk against the wall,’ Yulia explains. ‘He went to Chernobyl in 1986, had very high radiation levels after that, and had issues ever since.’
Her grandchildren are not without their medical difficulties. Apart from Artyom’s HIV, both have been diagnosed with heart arrhythmia, which has forced them to give up their favorite activities for now.
‘Lev’s condition is significantly worse than Artyom’s, but they are both registered at the hospital and will have a comprehensive checkup and additional testing at the end of this month. It’s difficult for them to run around while waiting.’ ‘It’s not serious and curable,’ Yulia assures me.
Those are not the only issues the family has had to deal with. Skirmishes erupted in 2014 between Ukrainian government forces, local police, and separatist insurgents.
When pro-Russian forces seized Mariupol, the Pinchuk Foundation launched a rescue mission, moving them and other families to Kyiv until the fighting stopped. ‘When the Russians invaded Ukraine, we collaborated with a charity to get them to Kyiv,’ Elton said in his memoir.
The family lived in Kyiv for three months until it was determined that they could safely return home.
‘They got us a flat in Kyiv, and we were relieved to be safe,’ Yulia adds. ‘We were terrified in Mariupol because people thought Russian tanks were about to attack the city.’
Yulia has not only received financial assistance from the organization but also relied on them to provide extras for her family.
‘There is a fund that aids us; they bought new furniture for our apartment and provided us with air conditioning,’ she explains. ‘We’ve never been informed it’s straight from Elton, but it’s plausible.’
Thanks to the charity, the Ageyevs had that emotional meeting with Sir Elton and David in Kyiv last year. Yet, calamity loomed. When Yulia prepared to board a plane to meet her grandsons, she received word that the boys’ father, Sergey, had died of a brain hemorrhage.
‘Sergey had a hemorrhage a few years ago and had lived with it, but it took his life,’ Yulia recalls, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘It was challenging for the boys since they had become quite close in recent years – he used to take them fishing, and you couldn’t separate them. They had trouble sleeping for months.
‘They lost their mother while still in the orphanage, so Lev has no memory of his mother. They had now lost both persons who had given them life.’
It created a somber backdrop to what could have been a happy encounter with Sir Elton. ‘When I told him the news, he sobbed, and we hugged. He also hugged the boys — and he hugged them like fathers,’ Yulia recalls. ‘I didn’t expect he’d have these feelings because he’s a celebrity, but I admired him for who he was and how nice he was.
‘That was highly natural – there were no journalists or observers. There were only Elton, David, and the interpreter.
‘He advised the boys to learn English and inquired if there was anything they needed or lacked, which is when the kids revealed they were sharing one bicycle. He promised to fix it and later sent them two new sports bicycles. We could never afford these. Therefore, we are quite appreciative.’
The lads, for their part, had their gifts for Elton, including photos for him to take back to the UK and a memory of their encounter – a heart-shaped box covered in shells that they originally purchased as a gift for their grandmother while on vacation in Danzig.
‘When they found out they were traveling to Kyiv, they were apprehensive about what to give Elton as a gift, so Lev thought of the box because the seashells reminded him of where he hailed from, which is near the water,’ Yulia recalls. He enjoyed it.’
When I asked Lev what it felt like to see Elton again after all these years, his eyes lit up.
‘Beforehand, I was a little anxious, but once we met, I realized everything was OK,’ he says. ‘He was quite pleasant.’
They haven’t seen their famous friend since, but both boys hope that as their English improves, they will meet Elton’s family.
‘I tell children they have two half-brothers in England, and it’s Lev’s ambition to visit them,’ Yulia explains.
‘For the time being, both boys must concentrate on their studies, but we have invited Elton to our home and hope he will come and invite us as well. Let us see what the future holds.’
It’s a future that is brighter than anyone could have predicted all those years ago.
