“I open the door to the room, and there is no room…” This is how the nightmarish story of the Fedorov family in Zaporizhzhia begins. On the night of November 10 to 11, 2024, their home was destroyed by a russian missile. The shell hit the bedroom where little Mykhailyk was sleeping together with his father. A few minutes before the strike, mother Nadiia was distracted by the dog, and this coincidence saved her life. The elder daughter Mariia was in the next room. She screamed: “Mom, the ceiling is collapsing here!” Only by a miracle were both able to escape outside. Then they rescued the grandmother, who could barely walk. At that time father Roman remained under the rubble. Amid silence and smoke, his words were heard: “I am here… I hear Myshko moaning!” The four-year-old younger son was pulled out from under the ruins half-alive.

That night, not only their home came under enemy attack. russian missiles struck the residential quarter of Zaporizhzhia. One person was killed, twenty-three more were wounded, among them five children.

Doctors called Mykhailyk’s injuries incompatible with life, but he survived. Gradually he opened his eyes, began to move his fingers, learned again to breathe, to sit, to raise his arms. “He has his mother’s character — stubborn and headstrong. He just wanted to live,” says Nadiia.

Myshko underwent another important rehabilitation in a specialized center in Lviv region, where the family got thanks to the support of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. The boy is smiling again, walking, working with a speech therapist, stubbornly overcoming each step. That was where the story of the Fedorov family’s war was recorded.