Thread by @ukraine_world

The story of Myroslava Svistovych, who left occupied Irpin, Kyiv Oblast, with her daughter. #UkraineWorldTestimony

On March 7, 2022, Myroslava & Lada managed to escape. At that time, there was heavy fighting between 🇷🇺 and 🇺🇦 forces, so it was dangerous to stay at home. 1/11

The evacuation from Irpin was also highly dangerous and risky. Myroslava and her daughter were almost killed trying to leave the city. 2/11

"Our 🚗 sped down Tyschenko Street and turned onto Universitetska Street. A friend from Kyiv 📱 me. "Taya, we are in a hurry to evacuate, I’ll call you back later." I turned off 📱 and saw how the windshield of our car was blown away by the burst fire…", Myroslava recalls. 3/11

The next moments happened for Myroslava in slow motion. She turned her head to the right, where her daughter Lada was sitting and saw that the window by her head had also shattered into pieces. 4/11

Instantly, like in a movie, Myroslava shouted at her daughter to duck. However, Lada couldn’t do so, because on her lap was a large carrier with their cat, which had been injured the day before. 5/11

This may have saved her life, because if she had ducked, the bullet that hit her stomach may instead have hit her head or neck. However, at that moment, Myrolava didn’t know that her daughter had been hit. 6/11

After a few more seconds, Myroslava saw their driver slowly lean to the left, opened the door, and fall out of the car. The car continued to move at a fairly high speed without a driver. 7/11

"I don't drive a 🚗 and I'm not a 🦹 who can move from the back seat of the 🚗 to the driver's seat in seconds, so the only thing that came to my mind was that we also needed to jump out. Besides, they could have kept shooting at us. I said to my daughter, "Lada, jump out!" 8/11

After taking everything that could have trapped her daughter in the car, (2🎒, a💻, and a 💼 with documents), Myroslava jumped out. At that moment, the car reached the left edge of the road, where the asphalt ended and the ground began. Thus, her landing was relatively soft. 9/11

"I don't remember how I ended up on the ground, but I didn't get a single scratch. The only thing I felt was the 🚗 turning from my jump & going to the opposite side of the road diagonally, passing over my right leg before that. But it wasn't painful at all," she recalls. 10/11

Then Myroslava saw the 🚗 moving away from her and waited for her daughter to jump out of it. But she didn’t. Finally, the car drove into a ditch on the right side of the road, and then Lada got out of it with a cat carrier.

Read the full story ➡️ bit.ly/403Crt8 11/11