“I was going into the wolf’s lair but I had to overcome my fear because I was the only one who could rescue my grandson.”
Ilya’s mom was lifeless. The missile strike that killed her left him bleeding, shrapnel embedded in his legs.
Under the guise of an “evacuation”, Russian troopers stole the nine-year-old from his dwelling and introduced him throughout the border into occupied Donetsk in March 2022.
He would possibly by no means have seen his household once more.
But as bombs rained down on Ukrainian cities and fighter jets screamed by the skies, his grandmother set out on a determined rescue mission.
This is the story of how one courageous grandma crossed 4 borders and risked every thing to deliver her beloved grandson dwelling.
Sheltering at midnight
“Mariupol was flourishing, it was booming,” Olena Matvienko, 64, says. The metropolis she had as soon as referred to as dwelling was lovely, she recalled, like a fairy story.
When Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Olena remembers pondering that it could not final lengthy.
But then the bombs got here, and the troopers.
Olena was residing in western Ukraine far-off from the Russian advances. But her daughter and grandson in Mariupol weren’t as fortunate.
Huge areas of the town have been razed to the bottom, as soon as proud condominium blocks obliterated and inexperienced parks scorched black. The relaxation was swiftly occupied, with the notable exception of the stoic defence of a metal manufacturing facility.
In downtown Mariupol, Olena’s daughter Natalya and grandson Ilya hid in a basement with a number of others as explosions shook the constructing.
For 12 days they sheltered in that darkish area, cooking what meals they’d on a hearth exterior.
‘My daughter died that night time’
When they ultimately ran out of provides they have been pressured to depart. They walked 5 miles to the outskirts of the town the place they lived. When they reached their highway they noticed their dwelling had been diminished to rubble.
Intense shelling rocked the streets round them, and the pair sought shelter within the constructing subsequent door. Six days handed.
Then on 20 March, a missile hammered into their constructing, sending smoke and dirt pouring into the air.
“My daughter was injured in the head and my grandson had shrapnel in his right thigh, his left thigh was torn away,” Olena says.
She’s chatting with Sky News from her dwelling in Uzghorod in western Ukraine. There are toys on the cabinets. Behind her Ilya is enjoying and flits out and in of view.
Olena seems to be down as she tells this a part of the story, her face solemn.
“My daughter died that night. They buried her in front of the house where we used to live.”
The subsequent morning, the Russians got here.
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Stolen away to enemy territory
The troopers separated the adults from their youngsters and despatched them to district 17 within the centre of Mariupol.
Just hours after dropping his mom, Ilya was snatched away from Ukraine into Russian-held territory like so many others. Thousands have by no means returned.
In a hospital in Donetsk medical doctors handled Ilya. At one level they thought of amputating his leg however as an alternative gave him two pores and skin grafts.
There was discuss taking him to Moscow with different youngsters. But Ilya instructed the Russians he didn’t need to go anyplace and that he was going to attend for his grandma.
Olena, in the meantime, was frantically looking for out what had occurred to her daughter and grandson. Eventually somebody she knew handed on the devastating information.
“At first I felt hysterical. The pain was overwhelming,” she says.
“But the thought that my grandson was in Donetsk, alone without anyone, helped me overcome the pain and pull myself together.
“And so I began desirous about how I may take him again to Ukraine.”
‘I used to be the one one who may rescue Ilya’
Olena wrote to organisations, businesses, everybody she may consider, asking for assist to get Ilya again.
Eventually she obtained a reply from the workplace of Ukraine’s president, written by deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
A plan was hatched and preparations made for Olena to go and fetch her grandson. The particulars, together with the route she took to get to Ilya, are being saved secret.
It was harmful. Olena was leaving free Ukraine and heading to components of the nation which have been exterior Kyiv’s management for almost a decade.
“I was scared. I did not want to be there. I was going into the wolf’s lair but I had to overcome my fear because I was the only one who could rescue my grandson.
“The solely factor I may take into consideration was getting Ilya again to Ukraine.”
It took about six days to reach the city of Donetsk. Olena crossed four borders and was finally reunited with Ilya at the hospital on 21 April.
“I cried once I noticed Ilya,” she says. “He could not consider that it was me at first. He was very blissful and we hugged one another.”
Ilya still had shrapnel in his legs and couldn’t walk, but they were able to leave the hospital together.
The lengthy journey dwelling
They travelled from the hospital by ambulance however bumped into hassle on the border between the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Russia.
“They did not want to let me go because I was coming from the western part of Ukraine,” Olena says. “But when I showed them my passport and it said Mariupol they allowed me to cross the border.”
She’s requested if she was shocked they’d let her and Ilya go. “Speaking honestly, yes. I was very surprised.”
Their route house is likewise being saved secret, however we are able to report that they travelled to Moscow by automobile. From there they have been in a position to fly to Turkey after which on to Poland, and from there they took a practice to Kyiv.
Finally, after weeks of fear, their journey was over. They have been again in free Ukraine.
At this level in her story Olena appears to tear up, feelings effervescent to the floor as she speaks of the second she set foot on acquainted soil.
“It was a big relief when we finally crossed the border into Ukraine: we were home.
“Yes, all my property had been destroyed. But I used to be lastly dwelling and I used to be with my grandson.”
A gathering with Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Ilya nonetheless could not stroll, nevertheless, and spent a while at a youngsters’s hospital in Kyiv. Doctors took 4 extra items of metallic out of his leg.
They have been visited there by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Olena regarded proudly at her grandson as he shook palms with the smiling Ukrainian president from his hospital mattress.
For the subsequent month-and-a-half, Olena took care of her grandson – she calls him Ilyushka fondly – within the metropolis of Uzghorod in western Ukraine the place they nonetheless dwell immediately.
“At first he was very reserved after what happened,” she says. “He was afraid of things like air raid sirens and thunderstorms.”
With time, Ilya regained the flexibility to stroll. “He still limps a little bit but he feels much better,” Olena says.
He was assisted by the Museum of Civilian Voices, a mission run by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, which helped him to entry medical and psychological therapy.
The museum is a big assortment of tales of civilians affected by the warfare in Ukraine, with a mission to share them in hope of a greater future.
Despite dropping his mother and father and his dwelling, Ilya – now 10 years outdated – has made new associates and settled into his new dwelling.
He was the primary youngster to be liberated from occupied Ukraine.
Ilya nonetheless has 11 jagged items of shrapnel in his physique, a permanent legacy of the missile strike that killed his mom a year-and-a-half in the past.
But Olena provides: “Now he feels alive. He knows that he is loved here.
“He’s my sense of life.”
Source: information.sky.com”