Up until recently, this family from Chernihiv had refused to leave their hometown, although it was becoming more dangerous for them to stay with each passing day. Their house has been under fire since the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion. Overall, the family has spent a month in Chernihiv. For over two weeks, there was no gas, electricity, water, and heating in their apartment. Tetiana, a mother of three, recalls that they had to cook the food outside.
“We learned how to define the type of shelling by its sound. The house was shaking from the constant shelling. We used to spend the night either in the basement or in the corridor because the worst began at night,” Tetiana said.
Tetyana’s 5-year-old son Dima recalls: “It was dark in the basement. There was only one lamp, and there was no food.” The boy adds: “They fired at us very, very hard. It was scary.” When the child talks about the war, his mother cannot hold back her tears. Tetiana says she didn’t dare to leave the city earlier because her eldest son served in the Armed Forces in Chernihiv.
When the family has decided to flee, all the major bridges in the city were already destroyed. There was only one road left. But Russian soldiers didn’t stop shooting all day. As soon as the family crossed the bridge and got out of the car, the enemy started yet another attack. The first shell hit a car next to them, just 5 meters away. The car exploded. Fortunately, there were no people inside. The entire family, Natalia and little Dima, his father, older sister and her boyfriend, were injured by shrapnel. 5-year-old was badly injured in the leg. Then, the Russians fired another 20 shells.
“When I ran to the car, I saw injured people laying around, some of them has lost their limbs, I saw a dead woman,” Tetyana says. They tied the child’s leg with a tourniquet and rushed him to the nearest local hospital. On the way, little Dima said that he didn’t feel pain at all, although his mother could not even look at his injured leg. The family received first aid at a small local hospital. Then, Dima was sent to Ohmatdyt. The family is currently treated at the Orthopedics and Traumatology Department. Ohmatdyt doctors performed surgeries on the victims and removed numerous fragments. There is no threat to their life now. The family is in rehabilitation.
