"I saw my daughter’s legs. There were no sneakers on, as if somebody cut them off"

On 8 April, Natalia Stepanenko, her son, and her daughter, were supposed to board a train at the railway station in Kramatorsk and flee the war. When russian missiles attacked the city, they happened to be at the epicentre of the explosion. Natalia recovered her senses, being in a pool of blood. One of her feet was torn off. Her 11-year-old daughter Yana had her both feet torn off... A little more than a month after the tragedy, Natalia’s husband died.

I wanted to go from Kramatorsk at least to Kyiv, to Lviv, and then to travel somewhere further. I wanted at least to leave this Kramatorsk and go somewhere. My husband phoned me and said, “Take the children and go there, go to Mariyka.” Mariyka called me and said, “Come on, leave there.” Aircraft started flying in our area then. I perfectly understood that if they start dropping something, then...

If I was on my own, it would be okay then, but I had Yana and Yaroslav (Yarik) with me. My aunt told me, “Come on. You’d better pack your things.” And right at the same time, Ihor’s grandmother packed up and got ready to hit the road. She said, “I am going to travel too. To Vinnytsia, to see my sisters.” We went together. Her husband took us all out. On 8 April, he brought us to Kramatorsk. In fact, we were not going to be in Kramatorsk at all. We wanted to take an electric train in Kostiantynivka and go to Lozova. That was such a coincidence. For some reason, Oleksiy – Grandmother Tanya’s husband – said, “Well, I still need to go to Kramatorsk.” As he needed to buy some petrol there. We didn’t have any petrol in our neighbourhood at all, and if we did, its price was just crazy. He said, “As I’m still going to Kramatorsk, I can take you to the railway station.” Grandmother Tanya and I looked at each other: either to wait here in Kostiantynivka, or there in Kramatorsk? It would be for sure there... So that’s it. That is how he brought us to Kramatorsk, although we were going to Kostiantynivka. We were outside. Yana and I just came out. I told Yarik, “Yana always goes together with me.” We went to buy some pizza and then to have something to drink together with Yana. I told Yarik, “Come with me” – “But Yana is with you...” He was playing a game on the phone. Yana said, “Mum, I’ll go with you.”

Grandmother Tanya was waiting for a train to Khmelnytskyi.  A volunteer came up to those passengers and said, “Those of you who are waiting for a train to Khmelnytskyi, go out to the platform, go over there, where the tent is.” It [the missile] hit right there. They were selling some tea and sweets, well, everything like that there. Grandmother Tanya was standing there on the platform. I told Yana, “Let’s go there. I’ll have a smoke and we’ll join Grandma Tanya for some time, so that she doesn’t get bored, and time will pass faster.” We went out. Grandmother Tanya said, “Oh, this herbal tea is so delicious.” I said, “I don’t drink such tea at all.” While Yana said, “And I would take it.” “Come up then.” There were three women standing in front. She joined her in the queue. I talked to Grandma Tanya and then, I went a little further there, and that was it. I also talked to Maryna, a woman from my mother’s village. She died then. She was pregnant. Both her civilian husband and her daughter were killed too. For some reason, I looked in the direction of the city... Then I turned around and looked at Yana. I saw that a woman was leaving, so Yana was the next one in the queue. She was supposed to take that tea for herself.

I turned around, looking at the city, and that’s it. I did not understand at all what happened. My eyes dimmed, everything just went black in my eyes, and that’s it, and my ears were blocked.

I got lost, as they say. I was in a state of stupor. I don’t know how many seconds or minutes it lasted. When I came to my senses, my ears were buzzing and ringing. I could not understand anything because of some noise. I understood that something happened, but what was it? I could not imagine such a bomb or a rocket (how to call it correctly) in my worst nightmare. I wanted to get up, but I could not. Well, then I looked at my legs. One of them was okay. There was just some blood below and some pieces of fabric on my sports pants were torn out. As for my other leg, my pant leg was in holes and shreds up to the knee and my foot was dangling.

I started looking for Yana. I turned around and found her lying on top of Grandma Tanya. The blast wave threw Grandma Tanya’s body over from the platform. Yana was closer to me, a meter or a metre and a half away. “Grandma Tanya!” – I started to shake her body right away, but she was already gone.

Yana slipped off Grandma Tanya’s body. She crawled aside a little and said, “Mum, I’m dying.”

I said, “No.” Some boys started running around, and then the police, and the military. Some guy was running by and I asked him to give me a lace from his hood. I bandaged my hands and my feet as best I could. I bandaged them so that I could still have some strength. Then, the police officers ran up and put tourniquets on Yana’s legs. What I remember, when I looked at her, she just did not have her sneakers on. I saw the bones and her leg in the leggings pant. In fact, her leggings were almost intact. There were simply no sneakers on, as if somebody cut them off with a sword and that’s it. Later, when I saw her again, when we were transported to Lviv, I began to examine her well. It was all wrapped up anyway.

Apparently, her bones were simply crushed. Her foot remained untorn but it was crushed inside, so they shortened it. So now her one leg is longer and the other is shorter. Well, they bandaged my legs too. They cut off pieces from that tent and used them as stretchers to carry the wounded to the vehicles. I was taken to Pavlohrad. So that is how Yana and I were parted. She was taken to Dnipro, and I was taken to Pavlohrad. While Yaroslav was sitting inside the railway station alone with our bags. Bohdan, a police officer, called me when I was still lying there. Yana was already taken away, but I was still lying.

He asked, “Are you Yarik’s mother?” I said, “Yes, I am Yaroslav’s mother.” He asked, “Can you come over and pick up your son?” I said, “No, I can’t. My foot was torn off. How can I come?”

He called me back later, when I was in... They brought me to Pavlohrad. I don’t remember exactly. He called me and said, “If no one picks him up, I will take him to Dnipro, to some kind of orphanage or a boarding school.” I thought, “What boarding school [is he talking about]?” I started calling Aunt Tanya, a friend of mine, and she called her niece. Her niece then called me. I said, “Ira, listen, my Yarik is there at your place, in Kramatorsk. Please pick him up.” I gave the contact details of this Ira to Bohdan, and he brought Yaroslav straight to Ira, to her home. That’s it. Yarik spent the night at her place. The next day, my in-law and my cousin came, Grandma Tanya’s sons. They came to look for her and her things. So they took Yaroslav home there, back to Novhorodske. Later, he came here. A week or probably 10 days later. Larysa, godmother of Dasha, my eldest daughter, put him on an inter-city bus and he came here. Oksana, who is also our relative, met him here.

I spoke to him on 11 May. He never called me so early before, but then he called me at half past seven in the morning, “How is it? How are you?” I said, “Not bad. Everything is fine, everything is okay.” While all those explosions, all that stuff, could be heard on the phone. Well, on the 15th, I called Liusia. She used to be in one brigade with him [with my husband]. I informed her about the situation. She said, “What? He has not got in touch with you still?” She said, “Okay, we’ll try to sort it out.” She began to look for him. On the 16th, she called me and said that he was in Dnipro, in Mechnikova [hospital]. He was in the morgue. After that, I talked to her again. I said, “But Liusia, maybe it is a mistake? Maybe it is not him? Anything could happen. It could be a mangled body, a mangled face.” She said, “No, he was identified by a photograph. By his crosses.”

So, on the 21st, he was buried somewhere near Kurakhove. As Liusia told me, almost all of them were there... She did not say “all of them”, but “almost all of them”. Someone could possibly survive, as somebody was on Viber [messenger]... Dasha came to me and said, “Mum, this can’t be true, he was on Viber on the 12th. At least for some 30 seconds.” I said, “I don’t know.” But then we thought that maybe someone tried to text or call him on Viber. He had it with him. Dmytro Ihorevich then came with Anya. He was my attending doctor and Anya was a doctor too. At first, I did not understand why they came, but Liusia called them and told them that my husband died. Well, so they gave me some pills. They told me not to say anything to Yana because she would be crying. This might affect the wounds and they would heal badly in that case. While for us, the sooner our wounds heal, the faster they allow us to fly. We will be sent off. I was holding out for about seven days.

Yarik found it out on the same day. Well, he took it as a boy... We went downstairs. I told him, “Come with me, I’ll have a smoke.” He said, “Let’s go.” I could not be in the lift... He asked, “Mum, what happened?” I told him everything and he was crying, naturally. I said, “Come on; compose yourself because we cannot show to Yana that something happened.” Moreover, he loved them so much... He was not their biological father. He was their stepfather. They adored him. Then she looked at me once, and I was... Anyway, I could not [hold it]. Once I cast a look at the photos, I started crying. She asked, “Mum, what happened? Why are you crying?” I thought that eight days passed already. I told her that Uncle Vasya was gone. “Why did not you tell me before?” She burst into tears. She turned away to the wall, and that’s it.