Days after her father’s death, Kira was taken to a hospital in the Donetsk region by Russian-speaking soldiers after being injured by a landmine while trying to leave Mariupol with her father’s girlfriend.
“THE [Russian] The army came running, stopped two cars and took us to Manhush, a hospital because we were bleeding. “Then they took us from Manhush to another hospital in Donetsk,” Kira said. Speaking to CNN earlier this month from Kyiv, Oleksander told CNN he feared he would never see his granddaughter again because it was almost impossible to travel across the war-torn country to retrieve her. She said she spoke at the hospital where Kira was being treated and was told she would eventually be sent to an orphanage in Russia. Their grateful reunion, more than a month after the last time they had seen each other, was orchestrated by negotiators from Ukraine and Russia – and included an epic international journey. On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kira at the hospital to celebrate her return, also giving her an iPad to entertain her as she recovers. Oleksander said he had told Zelensky that Kira was “tired but happy” and thanked him for his granddaughter’s safe return. “No one believed [it would be possible]. “But thank God we did it,” he told CNN. Recovering Kira from Moscow-backed separatist territory has not been easy. Following the media coverage of her condition, the Ukrainian government told her grandfather that they had reached an agreement that would allow him to travel to Donetsk to pick up his granddaughter – but that it would not be an easy task. Undaunted, Oleksander immediately set off on a grueling four-day journey, taking a train to Poland, a flight to Turkey, a second flight to Moscow, followed by a train ride to the southern Russian city of Rostov. before finally arriving at a tearful Kira after another car trip to Donetsk, he said. After an emotional reunion – with countless tight hugs, they said – the couple then set off for home, following the same lengthy route in the return race to Kyiv.

“I miss”

At Kiev’s Okhmatdyt Hospital, Kira loves the only thing her father managed to keep after his death: his cell phone. It was her only bond with her family while she was in Donetsk. She had contacted Oleksander – her only blood relative – by linking to Instagram and texting her grandfather’s girlfriend to explain where she had ended up, she said. Instagram posts from February showed Kira posing innocently for a selfie, without the happiness of knowing how life would turn upside down in a few weeks.
Having this connection to her previous life was vital for the young girl as she was found in a Donetsk hospital surrounded by strangers and longing for her grandfather. “I was glad I could call them. I do not know how much time had passed,” Kira sighs, adding: “I waited a long time for her to pick me up. Even in the second hospital I waited … I miss her.” The couple reunited on April 23, Oleksander said, having last seen each other on March 10. He knows painfully that he could never have secured both him and Kira if he tried to retrieve her alone without the help of the Ukrainian government. “I would not dare to do it alone, of course. Because this project could have ended with the release of neither me nor Kira,” Oleksander said. While in Donetsk, Kira was interviewed by a Russian state media channel that aired a video of the young girl talking happily about how she was sometimes allowed to call her grandfather. The interview was used as “proof” that he was not abducted, according to a Russian TV presenter. However, Kira paints a very different picture of her experience.
“It’s a bad hospital there,” he told CNN. “The food there is bad, the nurses are shouting and the hospital is not good.”
Weeks later, Kira has recovered from some of her injuries, but she remembers with pain when shrapnel was removed from her body.
“They took me to Donetsk by ambulance at night, they took shrapnel from me at night. From my ear. I screamed and cried a lot because I felt their handling in my ear. It was here on my face, my neck, and my legs.” he said.

It is hidden in the ruins of Mariupol

Now safely in Kyiv, Kira is also able to reveal exactly what happened back in Mariupol and how the family’s fate ended when they tried to escape the city, which was quickly surrounded by Russian forces. She is said to be living between bombings and “loud bangs”, hidden with her father’s girlfriend, Ania and her children, among the damaged walls of their house. The tanks rolled down the street, Kira said, and she remembers seeing men in military uniform approaching their yard. Kira says that after the bombing of her house on March 16, the family was trapped in the cellar, with the neighbors helping them to get them out of the rubble. Her father never showed up. For three days, Kira, along with her father’s girlfriend and her children, sought refuge in another cellar before attempting their fatal escape from the city. It was Kira’s boyfriend who kicked a mine while running, he says. Kira remembers that her ears were bleeding later and that the family friend’s dog absorbed most of the explosion. The team survived but suffered shrapnel wounds. Kira said that was when Russian forces – alerted to the whereabouts of the group from the blast – picked up the group and took it to Manhush for immediate treatment at a hospital and then another in Donetsk by ambulance. where the group was forced to split, leaving Kira alone, injured and terrified, while the others were led elsewhere. The ordeal is a world away from Kira now, as she plays games on her new iPad, while in absentia talks about downloading more music playback apps and expressing her excitement of reuniting soon with her grandfather’s girlfriend. As the family begins the process of returning to some seeming normalcy, the fact that they are, to their great relief, together once again is not lost on them.
“I still can’t believe it finally happened. Because we believed it, but many said it was impossible. It was a really difficult process,” Oleksander said. They say they have been overwhelmed by the president’s efforts in their case – one that has gained worldwide attention.
But for Zelensky, Kira is just one of many Ukrainian children who say they have been deliberately deported to Russian-controlled areas. Moscow, meanwhile, has denounced allegations of forced deportations as lies, saying Ukraine has thwarted its efforts to evacuate people to Russia. “We are more concerned about the children,” Zelenski said during a visit to Kira on Tuesday. “Children are our future. We will fight for every child in Ukraine to return home.”