This is Sverdlovsk town in Luhansk region (now the town’s name is Dolzhansk). The town is very small and comfortable. All the coalmines belonged to Rinat Akhmetov. People lived very well here. Mining was profitable; salaries were paid to miners without delays. We used to have 10 restaurants. That was quite many for such a small town of 70,000 inhabitants. The future looked bright for us then, but one day everything changed. It was 3 July 2014.
It was Sunday. I was in the yard and my grandson Kyrylo and his grandfather were in the house. Then, the neighbour came and I greeted him. Suddenly, an explosion happened. I began to rescue the man. I ran to call out for people’s help. It exploded not far. My husband rushed out with Kyrylo in his arms and said: ‘To the cellar’. Everything was prepared in the cellar. And there came the second shot and all three of us were wounded.
We did not know it yet. We were not prepared. It just began then. How to act correctly in such cases, we did not know.
All three of us were conscious. My husband called an ambulance and gas emergency service. Our street gas pipeline was damaged and there was a big gas leak. He called our daughter who was at work and we waited. Kyrylo was screaming and crying: ‘Grandma, it hurts me!’ I said: ‘Be patient because it hurts your grandmother too.’ He was just learning to speak at that time. He was two years old then.
My husband was lying in blood. There was a pool of blood. He said: ‘Either I die now, or please give me some rope.’ We were rescuing ourselves as best we could. He bandaged his legs because all the fragments hit his vein. Then an ambulance came and took all three of us.
Kyrylo had an operation. The town hospital did not receive my husband. They sent him to Luhansk because there was a risk that he would die as all the veins were torn. The blood loss was enormous. There was a good doctor in Luhansk who sewed it all.
My husband has no veins in his legs, everything was damaged. I went through eight operations. Shell fragments hit my abdomen and disfigured everything there. A net was put on my abdomen because everything came out. Kyrylo was operated on too. Doctors could not join his muscle tissue… There was no skin on his legs at all, only the bone. They did a skin graft.
The rehabilitation, the procedures certainly give a lot, they give a lot. We had all kinds of electrophoresis in our sanatorium. Now he receives vortex baths that massage the muscle. This is very important. The result is plain to see.
The Foundation helps a lot, providing rehabilitation for children. Thanks to Rinat Akhmetov, we were provided with a voucher. Then Ryta, Kyrylo’s mother, began to deal with it herself. She buys longboards, roller-blades, trampolines. She signed him up to football training. So, the muscle started to grow little by little. She does vitaminization. Every year we go to Velykyi Lug. Rinat Akhmetov provides us with a voucher. Kyrylo is recovering, rehabilitating himself. The treatment and rehabilitation procedures help a lot.
I dream of peace in the first place. Peace not only for Kyrylo, peace for all the people on earth, people who are on this side and on that side. This is number one. And health. Stability, purposefulness in life, to achieve one's own goals and peace on earth, most importantly. This is probably everyone’s wish among those who came through such a pathway.
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