Kyiv woman falls nine storeys after Russian bombardment and lives to tell the tale
A 23-year-old woman, Veronika, miraculously survived after falling from the eighth floor during Russia’s large-scale attack on Kyiv on the night of 30-31 July. She is currently in hospital.
Details: Veronika said she had been feeling anxious that day. She was returning home late in the evening when the drone attack began.
"I heard these Shahed drones flying. I hid from them under the trees as I was walking home," Veronika recalls.
Veronika says she never goes to the bomb shelter during air-raid warnings. She doesn’t remember how she fell off the eighth floor of her apartment building.
"I don’t know how. I was asleep, and when I woke up I was on the wreckage below. I must have slid down somehow. I don’t know how it happened at all. It’s as if I levitated down," she told reporters.
Veronika thinks she was probably thrown out of the apartment still in her bed.
"I didn’t realise what I was doing, I just had a shock. I looked at my leg and felt even more panicked," she says.
The BBC has reported that Veronika’s parents died in the attack, but she has not yet been informed.
Veronika is now in hospital. She was found to have a broken leg, a brain injury and concussion, says Serhii Dubrov, the director of the hospital where Veronika is undergoing treatment.
"It is weird – she fell from the eighth floor with nothing but minor injuries. But she has had an acute psychological reaction to the stress. She doesn’t know what happened to her parents yet," Dubrov says.
Background:
- On the night of 30-31 July, Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine, firing 317 drones and missiles, most of which targeted Kyiv. As of the morning of 1 August, 31 people were confirmed killed in Kyiv, including five children, the youngest of whom was two years old. At least 159 others were injured.
- Among the victims was six-year-old Matvii Marchenko, a member of the Kyiv-based Sen-Bin karate club.
- Nataliia Haiova, a preschool teacher from the village of Ivankovychi, was killed with her two sons, aged 17 and 22, and her brother.
- Russia also took the lives of neurologist Roman Moskalenko, Vitalii Raboshchuk, who practised Japanese martial arts, and Vlada, his 18-year-old daughter.
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