KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking nearly 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and leaning on a stick, is reunited with their family days after being separated while fleeing to safety.
Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska and her family decided to leave the frontline town of Ocheretyne in the eastern Donetsk region last week after Russian troops entered there and fighting escalated.
The Russians have advanced into the area, bombarding Kiev’s weakened and ammunition-depleted forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
“I woke up surrounded by gunfire — so scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview posted by the Donetsk Region National Police.
In the chaos of the departure, Lomikovska was separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, including one, Olha Lomikovska, who had been injured by shrapnel days earlier. The younger family members chose side streets, but Lydia wanted to stay on the main road.
With a stick in one hand and a splintered piece of wood in the other, the pensioner made her way to the Ukrainian lines all day without food or water.
The nonagenarian described her journey by saying that she fell twice and had to stop at a few places to rest. She even had to sleep along the way before waking up and continuing her journey.
“One time I lost my balance and fell into the weeds. I fell asleep… a little and kept walking. And then, for the second time, I fell again. But then I stood up and thought to myself, “I have to keep going one step at a time,” Lomikovska said.
Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region, said Lomikovska was rescued when Ukrainian soldiers saw her on the street in the evening. They handed them over to the White Angels, a police group that evacuates frontline citizens, who then took them to an evacuation shelter and contacted their relatives.
“I survived that war,” she said, referring to World War II. “I too had to go through this war and in the end I was left with nothing.
“This war was not like that. I saw this war. Not a single house burned down. But now – everything is burning,” she said to her rescuer.
The latest twist in the story is that the CEO of one of Ukraine’s largest banks announced on his Telegram channel on Tuesday that the bank would buy a house for the pensioner.
“The Monobank will buy Lydia Stepanivna a house and she will certainly live in it until this abomination disappears from our country,” said Oleh Horokhovskyi.
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Associated Press writer Volodmyr Yurchuk in Kyiv contributed to this story.