When the Russian missile hit her home in Dnipro on Saturday, Anastasia Shvets (23) miraculously survived. She has an explanation for this.
“I have no words, I have no feelings, I feel nothing but a great emptiness inside,” writes Anastasia Shvets from the hospital in the Ukrainian industrial city of Dnipro. The 23-year-old miraculously survived when the Russian Kinshal missile hit the building complex where she lived with her parents on Saturday afternoon.
parents dead but she survives
200 houses were destroyed, dozens of people were killed and buried under rubble. At least 44 people died, including five children. Rescuers managed to rescue more than 70 injured people. Including Anastasia. She was lucky to be in the bathroom with load-bearing walls during the impact – unlike her parents, who were in the kitchen and have since disappeared and are believed to be dead.
“There was just an abyss”: Anastasia after the Russian missile impact 20 minutes/Twitter/Hromadske
“There was only an abyss”
The 23-year-old managed to crawl out of the rubble of the buried bathroom. She remembers looking for her pants and not finding them. Crouched half-naked on the huge chunks of concrete that had just formed part of the seventh floor. “Bathroom, kitchen, hallway and pantry were gone, there was only the abyss,” Anastasia later wrote on Instagram.
She has “a wound on her head and cuts on her legs”, but is unharmed – which she attributes to her fiancé, who died only in September: “I felt that Vladislav would protect me.”
Body temperature at 31 degrees
Arsen Dzodzayev, an engineer and photographer, captures their miraculous rescue on camera: Anastasia, bare-legged in the freezing cold, at the top of the destroyed apartment complex. She’s holding a green stuffed animal and Christmas wreaths and doesn’t want to part with any of them. Her other hand covers her mouth as if she wants to stifle a scream. Anastasia’s body temperature is 31 degrees when she arrives at the hospital.
The moment of rescue: Anastasia bare-legged in the freezing cold at the top of the collapsed apartment complex. 20 minutes/Twitter/Hromadske
The search for survivors in Dnipro has been halted. The attack was the heaviest since Russia began bombing Ukrainian towns far from the front lines three months ago.
Navigation account 20 minutes Time19.01.2023, 08:00| Act: 01/19/2023, 08:00