Olga, a 27-year-old Ukrainian woman seriously wounded while sheltering her baby from shrapnel blasts in Kyiv, recalled the shock as she saw blood covering her child after a missile strike that shattered glass across the room.
“I was wounded in the head and blood started flowing, and it all flowed on the baby,” Olga said while sitting on a bed at the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, where she was being treated.
“I couldn’t understand, I thought it was her blood,” she said.
Photo: Reuters
Photographs of Olga, her head bandaged and her upper body covered in cuts as she holds her baby, Victoria, have featured widely on social media, in an image encapsulating the heavy toll being paid by civilians in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As Victoria’s father, Dmytro, took the girl, Olga said she began screaming that her daughter had been cut.
“Olga, it’s your blood, it’s not hers,” she recalled Dmytro saying.
Ukrainian authorities said that at least 60 civilians have been killed in Kyiv since Russia launched what it calls a “special military operation” on Feb. 24, several in missile strikes on residential buildings.
Olga, who did not share her family name, said she had woken up to feed the six-week-old baby and had covered her with a blanket to keep her warm when the missile strike occurred.
“That’s what kept the baby alive. I just got her covered in time, and then Dmytro jumped up and covered us, too.”
Olga is being treated for multiple cuts to the head and body, but the baby was unharmed apart from a scratch and some bruises.
“There’s nothing left for us to do but to stay positive, just to believe that it was the worst, the most horrible thing that could have happened in our lives,” Dmytro said, adding that he had been woken by the sound of shattering glass.
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