Oleksandr Yastrebov:
The aircrafts came early in the morning and, probably, by mistake or I don't know why, they dropped the bombs onto the city centre. It was at 6 a.m. on 14 July 2014.
They hit a four-storey residential building. The first entrance section, where Bohdan, my grandson, lived with his parents, was completely destroyed. And the middle entrance section was completely destroyed down to the foundation, the entire block. Just miraculously, Bohdan survived it. All the people from the entrance section, who were there, they all died. He was the only one who survived.
He lived on the second floor, and a floor slab crushed his pelvis. His torso was free. It turned out to be sort of a niche or window there. At first, he was completely covered by debris when they began to clear it. I came in about half an hour. I live in a neighbouring village. They began to clear the debris. A lot of people came, including those from the Emergencies Service. Loaders, a crane, excavators came from the mines and began to remove the debris and look for someone, as someone could still be alive.
They first found some victims from the upper floors who were all dead. And then they heard his thin voice. He was conscious, he did not lose consciousness all that time. His voice was almost not heard by then.
He started to call his dad. ‘I'm here, dad!’ He began to cry. A big question was how to release him because there he was, we could see him, but it was very dangerous to remove the floor slab because other slabs were still on it. Well, the guys from the Emergencies Service did great job. They figured it out how to do it the right way. It was a very tense moment, but they pulled him out.
Ambulances were on stand-by. They were waiting here in case someone remained alive. He was taken to the Central City Hospital in Snizhne. X-ray scans were taken. It turned out to be a fracture of the pelvis and hip bones. His condition was very bad. At first, it seemed to be more or less good, but then it got worse and worse.
A resuscitation vehicle was called in from Donetsk and he was taken to Donetsk regional children's hospital. He had an internal blood loss [bleeding]. On the second day, his kidneys began to fail. His blood was transfused completely several times. He was on the brink for almost a month.
He did not walk from July till November. He got the pelvic displacement, but they said, it was within normal limits. We'll see how it goes further.
In the spring, I started to receive calls from the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center and was offered some help in treatment and rehabilitation in sanatoriums either in Zaporizhzhya or Slovyansk, but I chose Sloyansk because it is easier for me to get here. These are familiar places. I like the nature and the air here.
Many thanks to Rinat Akhmetov for giving us this opportunity to get a rehabilitation course. The grandson has become much calmer. He sleeps more calmly at night. He usually screamed almost every night, somewhere at one in the morning, as he was afraid of something. While now it has become a little easier for him. And he became more relaxed and more cheerful. So, big changes have happened.
Bohdan Yastrebov:
I was covered with stones. And then the house was cleared. When I fell into a large pit, my legs fell there. And I was holding on to the pathway. The pathway was like that. And there was a pit.
Oleksandr Yastrebov:
When I drove up and looked at this building, I said at once that there could be no one alive. Basically, there was almost no hope. That is why it is a great miracle and luck, I do not know.
Now, looking at his progress after two years, at what we have already achieved, I believe that he got off with just a slight fright, so to speak. Now, when everything has passed, these worries and pain have passed, I think that he was very lucky that he remained alive and able to move and walk.
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