The instructor and mother whose bloodied face grew to become one of many early defining images of the invasion of Ukraine referred to as on Russian President Vladimir Putin to cease the “meaningless warfare” Saturday in a brand new interview.
“Please, get the message throughout that Ukraine doesn’t wish to hurt anybody. Ukraine is a really pleasant nation,” Olena Kurilo, 52, stated. “Our moms will lose their kids, outdated folks and youngsters will die, strange folks will die harmless of something.”
Kurilo emerged from the hospital Thursday in Chuguev, exterior the town of Kharkiv, when journalists captured a photograph of her, coated in bandages after a missile strike despatched shards of window glass flying into her face.
Her house had been fully destroyed by a Russian missile strike and he or she stated on the time she was solely alive attributable to a “very robust guardian angel.”
In her new interview, she informed the Daily Mail she made a direct plea to Putin, who she singlehandedly blames for the warfare.
Get the latest updates in the Russia-Ukraine conflict with the Post’s live coverage.
“I don’t know anybody who want to go to warfare with Russia. Not a single particular person thought that Putin might do that,” she stated, including she thought Putin would cease when he acknowledged Donetsk and Luhansk areas, collectively known as the Donbas, as Russian-backed impartial folks’s republics. “’I perceive that we’re pawns within the recreation between Russia and america. We’re a bargaining chip, however the world has turned the other way up.”
Kurilo stated she and her household are afraid, as are her neighbors. “We don’t know what’s going to occur to our house,” she stated.
“I name on all moms in Russia to not let their kids go to warfare,” she stated in a grave enchantment. “This can be a meaningless warfare, it is not going to deliver happiness to anybody, it is not going to make anybody richer.”
“We wish peace. Warfare is grief, it’s human grief,” she stated.
