In a scarf and with a cane, a 98-year-old Ukrainian woman escaped the Russians. She walked ten kilometers

All around in Očeretny in the Donetsk region, there was fire and confusion. The almost hundred-year-old woman knew that she had to get away from the Russians and the Ukrainian positions to the west of the village. She walked as fast as she could, with a scarf on her head, in a gray coat and blue house boots. She had her walking stick and found a piece of wood to lean on, the British BBC described the beginning of her journey.

A former defender of Azovstal in Mariupol spoke about how he managed to survive and avoid Russian soldiers:

He defended Azovstal and avoided capture. The Ukrainian described a dangerous escape from the Russians

“My legs somehow carried me, I didn’t control them. I also lost my balance and fell into the grass. I took a nap and went on,” Lomikovská told reporters. She was leaving the village with several relatives, the AP agency specified. They wanted to stick to the side roads, the grandmother stayed on the road, and in the confusion and fire they lost sight of each other.

The women, who went without food or drink all day last Friday, were finally noticed by Ukrainian soldiers on Saturday and called a police unit specialized in evacuating civilians from the front area, the so-called White Angels. They took her to the evacuation center, where she was reunited with her granddaughter, who had left the village several weeks ago.

She remembered World War II

The spokesman for the Ukrainian police in the Donetsk region, Pavlo Dyachenko, told American television NBC News that the police were trying to estimate where the woman went from the village, but apparently she was heading in an indefinite direction to the west and traveled about ten kilometers along a winding road.

In a conversation with the police, the old woman remembered the second world war. “This war is not the same. Not a single house burned then, but now everything is burning. I experienced one war, I have to endure another and I have nothing,” AP quoted from the video published by the Donetsk police.

The agency added that the story of the indomitable old woman prompted the head of one of Ukraine’s major banks to announce on social media that the bank would buy her a house so that she would have a place to live before the country and her village were rid of the occupiers.

NBC television reminded that especially elderly people often refuse for a very long time the constant calls of the Ukrainian authorities to civilians to leave cities and towns if the front is approaching them. In two years from invasion of the entire territory of Ukraine the war cost the lives of ten thousand civilians according to the latest confirmed UN figures. 3.7 million people live as internal refugees, another 6.5 million have gone abroad. At the same time, the television shows that the actual number of victims of the liquidation of cities and towns in the front zone as well as shelling and rocket attacks deep in the rear will probably be much higher.

The Ukrainian village of Hroza is nicknamed the village of orphans:

Orphan village Hroza today: the Russians killed their families, the children are surviving as best they can

Two years of war in Ukraine also brought a number of other unique testimonies, whether the story of the defender of Azovstal in Mariupol, who escaped Russian captivity, or statements of soldiers who are about to return to duty regardless of injuries which changed their lives forever and civilians who provide last service to the fallen. Such tragedies as the death of six dozen people after the attack on remain in permanent memory funeral feast in the village of Hoza.