"My granddaughter was saved by a toy mouse, and my mother died"

On 24 January 2015, Skhidnyi District was attack.

My husband and I were not at home. My daughter-in-law Maryna was here with her daughter Aniutka. They were in the kitchen. Maryna was standing by the window, talking to her father on the phone. Aniutka was sitting on a chair with a toy and a big mouse.

They started shooting then. Ania told me that my mother fell immediately. The girl started to cry. She was covered in blood, she was wounded. She was covered in blood. The mouse was covered in blood as well.

The neighbors came and took the girl. Then grandfather Vitia came. He went out to buy water. When he came back, he saw Maryna lying there. I put her on the bed in the bedroom and started CPR. But nothing helped.

A neighbor drove her to the hospital. And the girl and I were taken away by an ambulance. They started to sew up her wounds. Then we went to Kirovohrad to get the fragment out. She has a crack on her chin and a small wound on her leg. And her mother got fragments in the lungs. She died instantly.

Ania sat with a mouse near the refrigerator at the table. She said, "Grandma, I covered myself with my mouse like this when the shooting began." The mouse saved her life.

Two years have passed since that time. She says, "Grandma, let the mouse sit there. Let her guard the house."

After the shelling, Ania had a very difficult time. She was reserved. She didn't talk to anyone at all. She kept thinking about her mother. She didn't talk to anyone, not even the neighbors.

But then, thanks to Rinat Akhmetov, we underwent rehabilitation in Zaporizhzhia. She still remembers that she liked it there. And she already began to wish good morning to the neighbors. Everyone saw that Ania had changed. And talks to the children, and runs.

We took her to a psychologist. At first, she was always drawing in black, but now she's drawing in different colours. Now things got better. Of course, she often thinks of her mother.

Aniechka: