Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine: Thirteen-year-old Milena was fleeing to safety from Mariupol, a key Ukrainian port city besieged by Russian troops, when she was struck by a bullet.
Travelling in a car with a sign in the window that said “children, ” the rest of her family was unharmed.
The same Russian soldiers who opened fire then drove the wounded girl and her family to a nearby hospital, said Milena’s mother, who declined to give her name.
Today Milena is at a special children’s hospital in Zaporizhzhia, where the most critically injured children from eastern and southern Ukraine, where fighting has been hardest, are being brought for treatment.
Her dark brown hair in braids, a big laceration runs across Milena’s cheek and across to her neck. An oxygen tube taped up her nose, Milena’s eyes are dazed and her body convulses with pain.
Yet doctors say Milena is one of the more fortunate of the children at the hospital as she is likely to make a full recovery, although her case is not straightforward as one of her vertebrae was hit and her face will remain scarred.
Milena’s family was one of many trying to escape Mariupol, where Ukrainian authorities say almost 100, 000 people are trapped among the ruins and facing starvation, thirst and relentless Russian bombardment.