A 98-year-old Ukrainian woman who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking over 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone, wearing slippers and using a cane, has been reunited with her family, days after they were separated while fleeing for safety.
Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska and her family chose to flee the front-line town of Ocheretyne, in the eastern Donetsk area, last week after Russian forces arrived and combat escalated. Russian soldiers have been advancing in the area, bombarding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones, and bombs.
Related posts
“I woke up surrounded by shootings all around—sso scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview released by the Donetsk region’s National Police.
During the evacuation, Lomikovska separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, one of whom, Olha Lomikovska, had suffered shrapnel injuries days earlier. Lydia preferred to stay on the main road, while the younger family members explored alternative paths.
She traveled all day without food or water, holding a cane in one hand and a splintered piece of wood in the other.
The nonagenarian described her trek, stating that she had fallen twice and had to stop to rest at times, even napping along the road before waking up and continuing.
“Once, I lost my equilibrium and fell into the weeds. I dozed off briefly and continued walking. Then, for the second time, I fell. But then I got up and said to myself, “I need to keep walking, bit by bit,” Lomikovska explained.
Ukrainian soldiers spotted Lomikovska wandering along the road in the evening, saving her, according to Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region. They turned her over to the “White Angels,” a police group that evacuates residents living on the front lines, who transported her to an evacuee center and notified her relatives.
“I survived that war,” she said, referring to WWII. “I, too, had to go through this conflict, and in the end, I have nothing.
“That war was unlike this one. I witnessed that war. Not a single house burned down. But now, everything is on fire,” she explained to her rescuer.
In the newest twist in the narrative, the CEO of one of Ukraine’s top banks said on his Telegram channel on Tuesday that the business would buy a home for the retiree.
“Monobank will buy Lydia Stepanivna a house, and she will surely live in it until the moment when this abomination disappears from our land.” Oleh Horokhovskyi, the bank’s president,
