A young woman has been reunited with a sister she never knew was alive after a deathbed confession by her mother.

Nina Mogilina, now 36, who is a resident of the Kochkovsky district of the Novosibirsk region, was one of a family of seven siblings living with an abusive father who had threatened to kill all of them if his wife gave birth again.

As a result, Nina recalls that when her mother was pregnant again with a seventh child, after giving birth, she had left the house and then returned to say that the child had died.

In reality, however, she had handed the baby to a hospital where another family had promised to give her a good home and had walked away.

A short while later the mother and children fled the abusive relationship and it was only years later when her mother died that she revealed that her sister had not died but in fact, was very much alive and had been handed over for adoption.

But the mother gave no details, and it was left to Nina to try and find her long-lost sibling and see if she was even still alive.

Nina said that she could recall helping her mother give birth when she was just 10 years old as they were too poor to afford a midwife, saying: “I cut the umbilical cord myself, and then ran looking for snow, my mother asked me to put it in a pillowcase and put it on her stomach as it helped to deal with the pain from giving birth.”

He said that the mother had decided to name the girl Natasha, but the next day had left the house with the baby and returned empty-handed, saying that the newborn had died.

She had always refused to give more details, and when Nina had wanted to know where the grave was so she could lay flowers, her mother had pointed to a mound of earth.

She visited it often before the family finally left her father and moved away from the Stavropol Territory to a new home in Siberia in 1998.

She said that the problems started after her father began drinking heavily, and would even attack his wife when she was pregnant, with a particularly violent attack when she was pregnant with her seventh child who had in the end been born prematurely.

Her father apparently died four years after the family left, and her mother later died at the age of 49 after a two-year battle with cancer in 2020.

Nina said that her mother had been in a lot of pain, and had been screaming for several hours with medics turning up and saying they could do nothing and leaving again.

But then suddenly in what turned out to be shortly before the end, and mother had become lucid and appeared free from pain.

Nina said: “Mum told me that the pain was punishment. She said that her torment was an atonement for a grave sin. She then told me that Natasha was alive. I was in shock. I asked what you mean alive?”

She then said that she had left the baby in a hospital, and that the family of a medic had adopted her.

Her mother had said she wanted to rest, and asked her to leave her alone for a while and when Nina came back, she had died.

Nina said he had been looking for her sister ever since and finally was reunited when she became involved with the programme looking for uniting families that was called ‘Wait for Me’ and was also given the support of her husband.

As it turned out later, the adoptive parents had remained Natasha as Lyuba (Love) and she had been raised in the village of Novokavkazsky, not far from Severny, where Nina’s family lived before moving to Siberia.

Lyuba Chernovaya, who disappeared 26 years ago, says that for many years she felt only resentment and hatred for her mother, who had abandoned her with her new family but never stopped to look for her and her siblings.

The two young women are now firm friends, and have worked hard to make up for the missed years without communication, and are also in touch with her missing brothers and sisters.