'There was nothing to breathe': Teen recounts Russian strike hitting Kyiv hospital during dialysis

(9 Jul 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyiv - 9 July, 2024
1. Wide of hospital hall
2. Close of Solomiia Femeniuk, 16-year-old who survived Russian missile strike on hospital
3. Solomiia with mother Oksana who was in the hospital when it was hit
4. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Oksana Femeniuk, Solomiia's mother, pointing to video on phone:
"Here is the window where Solomiia was lying. I looked and couldn't understand if she's there or if she's alive... And I was buried in the basement. Here's a mother whose child was also there. And this is the doctor."
5. Close of Solomiia's hands
6. Close of Solomiia
7. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Oksana Femeniuk, Solomiia's mother:
"Doctors rushed into the dialysis room to disconnect the patients urgently because there were many explosions throughout Kyiv. At the moment the doctors arrived, an explosion occurred. One of the doctors died, and others were injured. The ceiling collapsed on the children, and they lay there unable to move. Solomiia cannot walk at all."
8. Mid of wheelchair of Solomiia
9. Wide of Solimiia with mother
10. Close of Oksana Femeniuk
11. Close of Oksana's hand
12. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Solomiia Femeniuk, 16, survivor of missile strike:
"I first thought about my mom, whether she was alive, whether I was alive right now. As soon as I realized I was alive, I thought about whether I would suffocate here. There was dust, and there was nothing to breathe. Out of fear, I started trying to lift the ceiling that had fallen on us. I thought I could lift it, but I couldn't. And I thought that was it, that I wouldn't get out of there. But in the end, I did get out."
13. Mid of Solomiia's legs and scratches on Oksana's
14. Close of heart on Solomiia's T-shirt
15. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Oksana Femeniuk, Solomiia's mother:
"I ran out, I saw everything destroyed. I feared my child was under the rubble, thinking she might not be alive anymore. I rushed to clear the debris, but it was like dust, you know? Trying to sift through it with my fingers, like digging through soil."
16. Mid of Solomiia
17. Wide of Femeniuk's family friends
18. Mid of Solomiia receiving gifts
19. Close of Solomiia receiving gifts
STORYLINE:
The sky was crystal clear on Monday when Oksana Femeniuk took her teenage daughter to Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital for a routine dialysis.
At around 10 a.m., air-raid sirens blared.
Sixteen-year old Solomiia was undergoing the treatment that required her to sit still for up to five hours and could not be interrupted.
Her mother had to flee to the hospital's basement shelter without her.
Hurtling toward them at 700-800 kilometers (435-497 miles) per hour was a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, according to Ukraine’s security service, the United Nations and open-source investigators.
Minutes later the world turned black.
Neither the patient nor her mother would remember the moment the missile struck.
But they remember the chaos that ensued after regaining consciousness: Femeniuk thought she would choke from the fumes.
Solomiia woke to find the ceiling crumpled over her small body.
The toll of Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in almost four months - one of the deadliest of the war - shows the devastating human cost of Russia’s improved targeting tactics.
Solomiia was born with chronic renal failure, making hemodialysis part of her life.
After the full-scale invasion, Femeniuk left her three children and husband behind in the small village near Rivne, in western Ukraine, to live in the capital so the girl could access the treatment she needs.
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