“I ran and ran,” says Lydia Lominowska. “Walked, kept running.” Lominowska sits on her bed in an emergency shelter and talks about her escape from her village Ocheretyne in eastern Ukraine: She escaped the Russian attackers on foot at the end of last week – despite her 97 years.
“I suffered so much, God, I was so tired!” The words come out of her slowly and calmly. You have to ask questions out loud.
Tough and determined
Lominowska is a bit hard of hearing, but tough and determined.
She wears a pink cardigan over her floral dress, a strand of gray peeks out from under the colorful headscarf, and her small blue eyes stand out against her wrinkled face.
Small village with 3000 inhabitants
For days, the Russian army bombarded the small village of Ocheretyne, where three thousand people once lived before the war. The front has been close for a long time; the former industrial city of Avdiivka, which the Russians took in February, is almost 20 kilometers further south.
Woman left everything behind
Lominowska was still one of the few in the village to hold out, but on Friday she too decided to go – at the last minute. She left her house in the city center, left everything behind and hit the road. “I didn’t see anyone, I just heard shots. I didn’t know where or who it was,” Lominowska said. She ran through ruins, past corpses. “There was a soldier lying there, already dead, at least he was covered. And the other one was just lying there.”
“Almost the entire village was on fire,” says the old woman. “Today I heard that the Russians have already taken half of it. I don’t know what’s going on there.’
“I just heard the shots”
Using an old sign as a stick, Lominowska simply continued walking along the road to Pokrovsk, a city more than thirty kilometers away. “I don’t have a watch, I don’t have anything. I ran for a long time. I walked and walked without turning around,” she says. “I just heard the shots. I thought they were going to shoot me, but no one was there.”
Saved by Ukrainian soldiers
“I ran and ran, I suffered so much,” Lominowska repeats again and again. After several hours on the deserted road, a car finally approached. Two Ukrainian soldiers stopped. “‘Grandma, where are you going?’ Then I said, I’ll run as long as I can and then I’ll fall into the meadow and sleep,” she says, describing the moment of rescue. “The soldiers gave me two sandwiches, and I ate one Somehow I no longer had the strength to eat.” The army called the police and the officers eventually took Lominowska to Pokrovsk.
“She ran about ten kilometers,” said Pavlo Diachenko, spokesman for the regional police. Otscheretyne is now destroyed. Things don’t look any better in the surrounding villages. “The enemy bombardment just doesn’t stop,” says the police officer. “There are still a few people in Ocheretyne. We don’t know how many, or whether they are dead or alive.”
Source: Krone
I am Wallace Jones, an experienced journalist. I specialize in writing for the world section of Today Times Live. With over a decade of experience, I have developed an eye for detail when it comes to reporting on local and global stories. My passion lies in uncovering the truth through my investigative skills and creating thought-provoking content that resonates with readers worldwide.
