KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped from Russian-occupied territory Walking almost 10 kilometers alone, wearing a pair of flip-flops and supported by a cane, she was reunited with her family days after they were 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 and fighting intensified.
The Russians have advanced in the area, attacking Kiev’s depleted and ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
“I woke up surrounded by gunfire – so scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview published by the National Police of the Donetsk region.
In the chaos of the match, Lomikovska was separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, including one, Olha Lomikovska, who was injured by shrapnel days earlier. The younger members of the family took secondary paths, but Lydia wanted to stay on the main road.
With a cane in one hand and balancing herself with a piece of splintered wood in the other, the pensioner walked all day without food and water to reach the Ukrainian lines.
When describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had already fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at times, even falling asleep on the way before waking up and continuing the journey.
“Once I lost my balance and fell into the bush. I fell asleep… a little and kept walking. And then, for the second time, again, I fell. But then I got up and thought to myself, “I need to keep walking, little by little,’” Lomikovska said.
Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the Ukrainian National Police in the Donetsk region, said Lomikovska was saved when Ukrainian soldiers spotted her walking along the road at night. They handed her over to the “White Angels”, a police group that evacuates citizens living on the front lines, who then took her to an evacuee shelter and contacted her family.
“I survived that war,” she said referring to World War II. “I also had to go through this war and, in the end, I was left with nothing.
“That war wasn’t like this. I saw that war. Not a single house caught fire. But now – everything is on fire,” she told her savior.
In the latest twist in the story, the chief executive of one of Ukraine’s largest banks announced on Tuesday on his Telegram channel that the bank would buy a house for the retiree.
“Monobank will buy a house for Lydia Stepanivna and she will certainly live in it until the moment this abomination disappears from our land,” said Oleh Horokhovskyi.
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Associated Press writer Volodmyr Yurchuk in Kiev contributed to this story.
