“I ran and ran”: How a 97-year-old escaped from the Russians

“I ran and ran,” says Lydia Lominowska. “Walked, kept running.” Lominowska sits on her bed in an emergency shelter and talks about her escape from her village of Otscheretyne in eastern Ukraine: She escaped the Russian attackers on foot at the end of last week – despite her 97 years.

“God, I was so tired!”

“I suffered so much, God, I was so tired!” The words come out of her slowly and calmly. You have to ask questions out loud; Lominowska is a bit hard of hearing, but tough and determined. She wears a pink cardigan over her flowery dress, a strand of gray peeks out from under the colorful headscarf, and her small blue eyes stand out from her wrinkled face.

• Also read: Russia announces capture of village near Avdiivka

For days, the Russian army had been bombing the small village of Ocheretyne, which was once home to 3,000 people before the war. The front has been close for a long time; the former industrial town of Avdiivka, which the Russians took in February, is almost 20 kilometers to the south.

A last minute decision

Lominowska was still one of the few in the village to hold out, but on Friday she too decided to go – at the last minute. She left her house in the town center, left everything behind and set off. “I didn’t see anyone, I just heard shots. I didn’t know where or who it was,” says Lominowska. She ran through ruins, past corpses. “One soldier was lying there, already dead, at least he was covered up. And the other was just lying there.”

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