MoS mission to save the sight of blinded teacher who woke us up to Putin’s savagery
Her bloodied face was the first image to bring home the grim reality of the brutal war in Ukraine. Here Olena Kurylo tells her story in full and reveals how doctors will tomorrow try to restore her vision
HER bloodied and bandaged face provided the first grim evidence of the sheer barbarity that Russian President Vladimir Putin was prepared to deploy to subdue Ukraine. Olena Kurylo was blinded in her right eye when a missile destroyed her apartment block in the opening hours of Russia’s brutal invasion last month.
While the terrified nursery teacher hid from the bombardment for a fortnight in a cold, dark basement, her blood-streaked face stared from the front pages of newspapers around the world, fuelling a wave of revulsion against Putin.
Today we can reveal how The Mail on Sunday has helped Olena to complete a remarkable escape from Ukraine and arranged for her to have surgery on her injuries in Poland. Doctors hope to save her eye and return at least some of her vision.
Speaking exclusively from her hospital bed yesterday, Olena, 52, said: ‘I’m very grateful and I will be until the end of days. I now have hope.’
Olena, who is half-Russian, was left with glass lodged inside her right eye and hundreds of particles embedded in her skin when the missile exploded outside her twobedroom flat in Chuhuiv, a town near the blitzed city of Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine.
Doctors had already warned the mother of one that she needed eye surgery as soon as possible, but on Friday an expert at a Polish hospital delivered distressing news: surgeons face a battle to save her eye and, a month after sustaining her injuries, she is in danger of developing a fatal infection from her wounds.
‘This is about saving your eye, not your sight,’ the ophthalmologist gravely told her. ‘She will lose her eye if she’s not treated, and that could lead to meningitis.’
Yesterday, Olena prepared for her daunting operation with the same remarkable bravery and stoicism that helped her survive the hell of relentless Russian bombardment in Ukraine.
Speaking to this newspaper, she bravely told the astonishing story of how she escaped the onslaught with her 27-yearold daughter and her heartache of leaving her husband Mykola, 54, behind.
The couple were woken at 5.20am on February 24 by three huge explosions that appeared to have come from a nearby military airfield.
It was less than an hour after Putin had announced his intention to invade.
‘We had been following the news but never believed a war would really start,’ she said. ‘My first thoughts were “this is really happening”.
There was a small period of silence before a big explosion.
‘Mykola left to fill up the car with the petrol so we could escape while I packed. But he got a flat tyre and the 30 minutes he spent replacing the wheel saved his life.’
Having collected the couple’s essential documents, Olena was sitting on a sofa in their bedroom when she suddenly heard a loud noise and saw shards of glass flying towards her.
‘It’s like a photo, I can picture it so clearly. The window shattered into a thousand small pieces,’ she said.
‘It’s a miracle I survived. I just remember thinking, “I’m not ready to die.” We had just refurbished our home. I could never have imagined that someone could lose something so fast.’
The missile left a 9m-wide crater by the parking space where Mykola normally parked his car.
The epicentre of the blast was 21m from their apartment. There was a moment of silence before Olena heard people crying for help.
‘The blood was running down my face and I couldn’t see anything. I had hundreds of particles of glass embedded in my skin but I felt no pain as I was in shock,’ she said.
‘At that point I didn’t know there was glass in my eye as it was filled with blood. I kept wiping my face with clothes to try and stop the bleeding but it just wouldn’t.’
Olena called her husband and daughter Katya to tell them she was alive, before managing to find paramedics to dress her wounds. This was where she was pictured by American photographer Wolfgang Schwan, whose image quickly spread around the world.
She then waited for Mykola to return before she went to hospital because ‘there were people far more wounded’ who ‘needed an ambulance more than her’.
At hospital, Olena was told that she had an injury in her right eye – but she was simply sent away with eye drops because there were no ophthalmologists in the city.
As Russia’s attacks around Kharkiv intensified, the couple sought refuge in a cabin in a small village in the woods outside the city while daughter Katya fled to the city of Dnipro with her two cats.
Olena and Mykola spent 12 terrifying days in the basement of the remote house – too afraid to leave for fear that they would be bombed. ‘We could see that the area was completely destroyed and see the missiles,’ Olena said. ‘We could feel the shockwaves from the explosions. I didn’t dare leave.’
When she did finally emerge and go upstairs into the cabin she slept in the bath on yoga mats. ‘I didn’t want to be around windows. I would only sleep in the bath. It wasn’t safe
My eye was filled with blood. I remember thinking: I’m not ready to die
in the bedroom as it was a room with windows.’
By this point, Olena was aware she was also the victim of a vile Russian disinformation campaign as false claims spread online that Schwan’s photograph of her injuries was fake and she was an actor. ‘It was horrible,’ she said. ‘I felt insulted.’ The MoS remained in contact with Olena while she was trapped in the cabin. She told us how she was desperate to leave – but that it remained too dangerous to do so.
Concerned that she still had not received any specialist medical care, the MoS contacted Moorfields Eye Hospital in London who in turn enlisted the help of Maaike van Zuilen, coordinator of the World Association of Eye Hospitals (WAEH). Ms Van Zuilen arranged for Dr Tanya Lushchyk, a Dutch-Ukranian ophthalmologist at Rotterdam Eye Hospital, to carry out a telephone consultation.
She concluded that large pieces of glass remained lodged in Olena’s eye and she had suffered bleeding and possibly the detachment of her retina.
It was increasingly clear that Olena needed urgent surgery – but first she had to escape what had become a deadly and complex battlefield.
Her salvation came in the form of a lorry driver who was delivering supplies in the area and who, at Mykola’s request, agreed that she could travel in his cab.
‘He smuggled me into Kharkiv through the forest,’ Olena said. ‘I spent the journey curled into a ball on the front seat to hide. I had to leave Mykola behind as he had to look after his paralysed mother.
‘If I didn’t have my wounds, I wouldn’t have left my husband. I needed to save my vision as I work with children and I love my job.’
After arriving at Kharkiv railway station Olena boarded a train to Dnipro, where daughter Katya was staying with a friend after fleeing the bombarded city of Kharkiv with her cats.
They spent four days together and saw another expert who had been lined up with the help of the WAEH and Dr Lushchyk in Rotterdam.
But, in another blow, Olena’s allergies to certain anesthetics, and the lack of surgeons in the shelled city, meant that a speedy operation was not forthcoming. Her best hope was to continue to flee west.
On Tuesday, she received a call from aid workers at the Ukrainian Red Cross in Lviv, whom the MoS had contacted for help, who offered to take her to the Polish border.
That evening Olena and her daughter boarded a 20-hour train from Dnipro to Lviv.
‘It was crammed,’ she said. ‘I didn’t sleep for the whole time. I was one of seven people sitting in a four-seater carriage, with a 30kg dog in the middle. But everyone comforted one another.
‘I was concerned about being bombed. They turned the lights off on the train and told us we couldn’t use our phone so the lights don’t attract Russian forces.’
Shortly before 10.30am UK time on Wednesday, Olena and Katya crossed into Poland after being dropped off at the border by the Red Cross and were greeted by an MoS reporter and photographer. Their entire lives were crammed into one bag and a rucksack.
On Friday, after a much-needed rest, our reporter took Olena to a hospital in Poland, which we are not naming to respect her privacy.
Despite knowing she needed emergency care, Olena believed it would be a simple procedure. But during the appointment, the expert broke the news that her condition was more serious, saying: ‘She should have had surgery a month ago – and even then getting perfect vision back would have been difficult.
‘She has penetrating trauma of the eyeball, a detached retina and a haemorrhage.’
On hearing the distressing news, Olena put her head in her hands, and said: ‘I didn’t think it was this serious. There was no question I was going to lose my eye.’
She was admitted immediately and is expected to have surgery tomorrow. Doctors say there is a chance Olena could restore her vision.
‘I was shocked,’ she said yesterday. ‘I had hoped they would be able to get my vision back and I might be able to see again.
‘Aesthetically I will have my eye, and I will have my life, but there is still hope inside of me I will get partial eyesight back.’
Olena, who becomes fearful when she hears aircraft overhead, says the injury has changed her, but she feels no hatred. ‘When I look in the mirror I don’t understand it. I cannot accept reality,’ she added.
Indeed, she even still wears the black puffa coat she was wearing the day her building was destroyed. She points out the tears in her jacket caused by the blasted glass, adding: ‘I really need to get a new coat. This one has bad memories.’
But she said: ‘I know I have this trauma and I know I was one of the first victims of the war but I understand that I’m one of many.
‘I know many will never be able to receive the help I have.’
In a sign of her undimmed defiance, she urged Ukraine to continue to resist the Russian invasion and said she hopes to return to her beloved country soon.
She said: ‘Every Ukrainian civilian, please do everything possible for Ukraine to remain a free and independent country.
‘Please support us. If Ukraine wins, the whole world will win, the whole of humankind will.’
I know I was one of the first victims, but I cannot accept reality