Olga, a young mother, protected her six-week-old daughter from shrapnel in kyiv. An image that has gone viral, which illustrates the Ukrainian civilians targeted despite Russia’s denials.
A scratch, a few bruises, but more fear than harm. The Okhmadet Pediatric Hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, released the photo of Olga holding her little Victoria in her arms. The young mother protected the six-week-old baby with her body during a bombing of the capital. In the seconds following the strike, Olga feared the worst for her baby, she told Reuters: “I had a head injury, the blood started to flow, to flow onto the baby. I didn’t understand, I thought it was his blood.” It was her companion Dmytro, the girl’s father, who reassured her: “It’s your blood, not his.” They were injured by the explosion of their windows, caused by the explosion of a nearby residential building. The image of the mother and her daughter has gone viral, illustrating the targeted Ukrainian civilians, nearly a month after the start of the Russian invasion.
Olga and her daughter Victoria, injured in kyiv, March 20, 2022. © Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital / Reuters
Olga attributes the salvation of little Victoria to the gestures she had just had a few minutes before, while she was breastfeeding her: “That’s what saved her life: I covered her in time. Then Dmytro jumped on us and protected us, too.” She has cuts and marks on her face, a bandage around her forehead, but she’s fine. “There is nothing else to do but stay positive, believe that the worst is over, that it was the most horrible thing that could happen to us”, he added, while the forces Russians are still trying, without succeeding yet, to encircle kyiv.
To read : Mall attacked, Biden on Friday in Poland… update on the war in Ukraine
Fear for residents of beleaguered Mariupol
Nearly a month after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine – still described as a “special military operation” by the Kremlin – the Ukrainian authorities have deplored the death of at least 60 civilians. During the night from Sunday to Monday, at least six people were killed in kyiv, in a bombardment targeting a shopping center. The situation is critical in Mariupol, besieged by Russian forces, who have offered Ukraine an ultimatum: “We ask the official authorities in kyiv to be reasonable and cancel the instructions given previously, which obliged the militants to sacrifice and become the “martyrs of Mariupol”, “said Mikhail Mizintsev, director of the Russian National Center for Defense Management.
Interview:“The places where the suffering is the greatest are not accessible”
A surrender refused by the Ukrainians, who denounced “deliberate manipulation and a real hostage-taking” of some 300,000 people who would still be in the port city -crucial for controlling the coastline on the Sea of Azov-, deprived electricity and running water, and while the strikes have been falling there almost continuously for two weeks. Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, said on Telegram: “The occupiers continue to behave like terrorists. They say they agree (to set up a) humanitarian corridor and in the morning they bombard the place of evacuation. The government is doing everything possible. The most important thing for us is to save the lives and health of our citizens.” She assured that Russian soldiers had forcibly transported a thousand inhabitants of Mariupol to Russia and that “350 children will be taken by force to Russia without allowing us to recover them”.
Any reproduction prohibited