Natalia is miraculously alive but she will never walk the same again.
Russia says it does not attack civilians, or the buildings in which they live and work.
But in a hospital bed in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, Natalia Mykolaivna scoffs at the russian version.
In the second week of March, the United Nations noted that Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine could constitute a war crime.
Since then there have been numerous documented attacks in which many people have died, many of them as a result of intense indiscriminate shelling of residential areas. But what happened to Natalia, 45, was deliberate, targeted and unjustified. It’s a miracle she’s still alive. Holding the tender hand of her son, Nikolai, she told me what happened to her in her hometown of Polohy on the day the Russian troops arrived. “I left my house, I was worried about my own mother, so I went to see her . He lived on the street next to ours,” says Natalia, describing how she was allowed to pass a first checkpoint by the Russian army.
“Then I went to my mother’s house, I raised my hands in the air saying that they had already told me that I could come in, but the soldier fired a burst from his machine gunhitting me in the legs, everywhere from the waist down.” Natalia did not see the face or hear the voice of the Russian soldier who shot her. “She did not say not a word. They were standing next to a tank with the letter Z on it,” she continued. “Everyone was wearing masks or balaclavas.” Natalia was evacuated by neighbors and her family to a hospital in nearby Zaporizhzhia and doctors have told her she survived “for a millimeter“.”The doctors have not told me how many bullets he had in his body. I was shot from the waist down,” he said, showing me a gunshot wound to the stomach. “There’s one here, and here and here too. everything is damagedmy female private parts too.”
The Ukrainians are trying to get on with their lives despite being so close to the front lines.
Natalia’s right leg is sprained and broken, supported by a metal frame. Her knee is completely shattered and she will never walk like she used to.
Polohy, the now-occupied town where Natalia was shot, is on the road to the besieged city of Mairupol. It is a few kilometers south of Orikhiv, a small farming town.
Orikhiv is the last town controlled by the Ukrainians before the front line. In recent days and weeks it has been peppered with Russian shells and mortars. Many people, especially those with young families, have fled to the relative safety of Zaporizhzhia or to cities further west.
But many older residents, doctors and members of the civil defense have stayed.
