Ukraine’s super gran: ‘I went into the wolf’s lair to save my grandson’

Published

2 years ago

September 23, 2023

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“I was going into the wolf’s lair but I had to overcome my fear because I was the only one who could rescue my grandson.”

Ilya’s mother was dead. The missile strike that killed her left him bleeding, shrapnel embedded in his legs.

Under the guise of an “evacuation”, Russian soldiers stole the nine-year-old from his home and brought him across the border into occupied Donetsk in March 2022.

He might never have seen his family again.

But as bombs rained down on Ukrainian cities and fighter jets screamed through the skies, his grandmother set out on a desperate rescue mission.

This is the story of how one brave grandma crossed four borders and risked everything to bring her beloved grandson home.

Sheltering in the dark

“Mariupol was flourishing, it was booming,” Olena Matvienko, 64, says. The city she had once called home was beautiful, she recalled, like a fairy tale.

When Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Olena remembers thinking that it would not last long.

But then the bombs came, and the soldiers.

Olena was living in western Ukraine far away from the Russian advances. But her daughter and grandson in Mariupol were not as lucky.

Huge areas of the city were razed to the ground, once proud apartment blocks obliterated and green parks scorched black. The rest was swiftly occupied, with the notable exception of the stoic defence of a steel factory.

In downtown Mariupol, Olena’s daughter Natalya and grandson Ilya hid in a basement with several others as explosions shook the building.

For 12 days they sheltered in that dark space, cooking what food they had on a fire outside.

‘My daughter died that night’

When they eventually ran out of supplies they were forced to leave. They walked five miles to the outskirts of the city where they lived. When they reached their road they saw their home had been reduced to rubble.

Intense shelling rocked the streets around them, and the pair sought shelter in the building next door. Six days passed.

Then on 20 March, a missile hammered into their building, sending smoke and dust pouring into the air.

“My daughter was injured in the head and my grandson had shrapnel in his right thigh, his left thigh was torn away,” Olena says.

She’s speaking to Sky News from her home in Uzghorod in western Ukraine. There are toys on the shelves. Behind her Ilya is playing and flits in and out of view.

Olena looks down as she tells this part of the story, her face solemn.

“My daughter died that night. They buried her in front of the house where we used to live.”

The next morning, the Russians came.

Stolen away to enemy territory

The soldiers separated the adults from their children and sent them to district 17 in the centre of Mariupol.

Just hours after losing his mother, Ilya was snatched away from Ukraine into Russian-held territory like so many others. Thousands have never returned.

In a hospital in Donetsk doctors treated Ilya. At one point they considered amputating his leg but instead gave him two skin grafts.

There was talk about taking him to Moscow with other children. But Ilya told the Russians he did not want to go anywhere and that he was going to wait for his grandma.

Olena, meanwhile, was frantically trying to find out what had happened to her daughter and grandson. Eventually someone she knew passed on the devastating news.

“At first I felt hysterical. The pain was overwhelming,” she says.

“But the thought that my grandson was in Donetsk, alone without anyone, helped me overcome the pain and pull myself together.

“And so I started thinking about how I could take him back to Ukraine.”

‘I was the only one who could rescue Ilya’

Olena wrote to organisations, agencies, everyone she could think of, asking for help to get Ilya back.

Eventually she got a reply from the office of Ukraine’s president, written by deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

A plan was hatched and arrangements made for Olena to go and fetch her grandson. The details, including the route she took to get to Ilya, are being kept secret.

It was dangerous. Olena was leaving free Ukraine and heading to parts of the country that have been outside Kyiv’s control for nearly a decade.

“I was scared. I did not want to be there. I was going into the wolf’s lair but I had to overcome my fear because I was the only one who could rescue my grandson.

“The only thing I could think about was getting Ilya back to Ukraine.”

It took about six days to reach the city of Donetsk. Olena crossed four borders and was finally reunited with Ilya at the hospital on 21 April.

“I cried when I saw Ilya,” she says. “He couldn’t believe that it was me at first. He was very happy and we hugged each other.”

Ilya still had shrapnel in his legs and couldn’t walk, but they were able to leave the hospital together.

The long journey home

They travelled from the hospital by ambulance but ran into trouble at the border between the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Russia.

“They did not want to let me go because I was coming from the western part of Ukraine,” Olena says. “But when I showed them my passport and it said Mariupol they allowed me to cross the border.”

She’s asked if she was surprised they had let her and Ilya go. “Speaking honestly, yes. I was very surprised.”

Their route home is likewise being kept secret, but we can report that they travelled to Moscow by car. From there they were able to fly to Turkey and then on to Poland, and from there they took a train to Kyiv.

Finally, after weeks of worry, their journey was over. They were back in free Ukraine.

At this point in her story Olena seems to tear up, emotions bubbling to the surface as she speaks of the moment she set foot on familiar soil.

“It was a big relief when we finally crossed the border into Ukraine: we were home.

“Yes, all my property had been destroyed. But I was finally home and I was with my grandson.”

A meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Ilya still couldn’t walk, however, and spent some time at a children’s hospital in Kyiv. Doctors took four more pieces of metal out of his leg.

They were visited there by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Olena looked proudly at her grandson as he shook hands with the smiling Ukrainian president from his hospital bed.

For the next month-and-a-half, Olena took care of her grandson – she calls him Ilyushka fondly – in the city of Uzghorod in western Ukraine where they still live today.

“At first he was very reserved after what happened,” she says. “He was afraid of things like air raid sirens and thunderstorms.”

With time, Ilya regained the ability to walk. “He still limps a little bit but he feels much better,” Olena says.

He was assisted by the Museum of Civilian Voices, a project run by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, which helped him to access medical and psychological treatment.

The museum is a huge collection of stories of civilians affected by the war in Ukraine, with a mission to share them in hope of a better future.

Despite losing his parents and his home, Ilya – now 10 years old – has made new friends and settled into his new home.

He was the first child to be liberated from occupied Ukraine.

Ilya still has 11 jagged pieces of shrapnel in his body, an enduring legacy of the missile strike that killed his mother a year-and-a-half ago.

But Olena adds: “Now he feels alive. He knows that he is loved here.

“He’s my sense of life.”

World

What are West Bank settlements, who are settlers, and why are they controversial?

Published

8 hours ago

August 12, 2025

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What are West Bank settlements, who are settlers, and why are they controversial?

There are increasing reports of violence and intimidation by Israeli settlers in occupied Palestinian territory.

Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay has been inside the West Bank, where he’s found settlers feeling emboldened since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

With the government largely supporting them, they act with impunity and are in many ways enabled by Israel security forces.

But what are the settlements, and why are they controversial?

What are settlements?

A settlement is an Israeli-built village, town, or city in occupied Palestinian territory – either in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.

The largest, Modi’in Illit, is thought to house around 82,000 settlers, according to Peace Now.

There is also a growing movement of Israelis wanting to build settlements in Gaza.

Settlements are illegal under international law and have been condemned by the UN. They are, however, authorised by the Israeli government.

As well as official, government-approved settlements, there are also Israeli outposts.

These are established without government approval and are considered illegal by Israeli authorities. But reports suggest the government often turns a blind eye to their creation.

Israel began building settlements shortly after the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Etzion Bloc in Hebron, which was established that year, now houses around 40,000 people.

According to the Israel Policy Forum, the settlement programme is intended to protect Israel’s security, with settlers acting as the first line of defence “against an invasion”.

The Israeli public appears divided on the effectiveness of the settlements, however.

A 2024 Pew Research Centre poll found that 40% of Israelis believe settlements help Israeli security, 35% say they hurt it, and 21% think they make no difference.

Why are they controversial?

Israeli settlements are built on land that is internationally recognised as Palestinian territory.

Sky News has spoken to multiple Palestinians who say they were forced out of their homes by Israeli settlers, despite having lived there for generations.

“They gradually invade the community and expand. The goal is to terrorise people, to make them flee,” Rachel Abramovitz, a member of the group Looking The Occupation In The Eye, told Sky News in May.

Settlers who have spoken to Sky News say they have a holy right to occupy the land.

American-born Israeli settler Daniel Winston told Sky’s chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay: “God’s real, and he wrote the Bible, and the Bible says, ‘I made this land, and I want you to be here’.”

Settlers make up around 5% of Israel’s population and 15% of the West Bank’s population, according to data from Peace Now.

How have things escalated since 7 October 2023?

Since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s subsequent military bombardment of Gaza, more than 100 Israeli outposts have been established, according to Peace Now.

In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government approved 22 new settlements, including the legalisation of outposts that had previously been built without authorisation.

Settler violence against Palestinians has also increased, according to the UN, with an average of 118 incidents each month – up from 108 in 2023, which was already a record year.

The UK government has sanctioned two members of Mr Netanyahu’s cabinet, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, for “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian civilians” – notably in the West Bank.

The UN’s latest report on Israeli settlements notes that in October 2024, there were 162 settler attacks on Palestinian olive harvesters, many of them in the presence of IDF soldiers.

Of the 174 settler violence incidents studied by the UN, 109 were not reported to Israeli authorities.

Most Palestinian victims said they didn’t report the attacks due to a lack of trust in the Israeli system; some said they feared retaliation by settlers or the authorities if they did.

World

‘There is no more time’: Madonna urges the Pope to go to Gaza

Published

10 hours ago

August 12, 2025

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'There is no more time': Madonna urges the Pope to go to Gaza

Madonna has urged the Pope to go to Gaza and “bring your light” to the children there.

In a plea shared across her social media channels, the pop star told the pontiff he is “the only one of us who cannot be denied entry” and that “there is no more time”.

“Politics cannot affect change,” wrote the queen of pop, who was raised Catholic.

“Only consciousness can. Therefore I am reaching out to a Man of God.”

The Like A Prayer singer told her social media followers her son Rocco’s birthday prompted her post.

“I feel the best gift I can give to him as a mother – is to ask everyone to do what they can to help save the innocent children caught in the crossfire in Gaza.

“I am not pointing fingers, placing blame or taking sides. Everyone is suffering. Including the mothers of the hostages. I pray that they are released as well.”

Pope Leo has been outspoken about the crisis in Gaza since his inauguration, calling for an end to the “barbarity of war”.

“I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, of indiscriminate use of force and forced displacement of the population,” he said in July.

WHO chief thanks Madonna

Every child under the age of five in Gaza is now at risk of acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF – “a condition that didn’t exist in Gaza just 20 months ago”.

At the end of May, the NGO reported that more than 50,000 children had been killed or injured since October 2023.

World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thanked Madonna for her post, saying: “humanity and peace must prevail”.

“Thank you, Madonna, for your compassion, solidarity and commitment to care for everyone caught in the Gaza crisis, especially the children. This is greatly needed,” he wrote on X.

Sky News has approached the Vatican for comment.

World

CCTV shows men in combat clothing shooting hospital volunteer at point-blank range in Syria

Published

17 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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CCTV shows men in combat clothing shooting hospital volunteer at point-blank range in Syria

Sky News has obtained shocking CCTV from inside the main hospital in the city of Sweida in southern Syria – where our team found more than 90 corpses laid out in the grounds following a week of intense fighting.

Warning this article shows images of a shooting

The CCTV images show men in army fatigues shooting dead a volunteer dressed in medical scrubs at point-blank range while a crowd of other terrified health workers are held at gunpoint with their hands in the air.

The mainly Druze city of Sweida was the scene of nearly a week of violent clashes, looting and executions last month which plunged the new authorities into their worst crisis since the toppling of the country’s former dictator Bashar al Assad.

The new Syrian government troops were accused of partaking in the atrocities they were sent in to quell between the Druze minority and the Arab Bedouin minority groups.

The government troops were forced to withdraw when Israeli jets entered the fray, saying they were protecting the Druze minority and bombed army targets in Sweida and the capital Damascus.

Days of bloodletting ensued, with multiple Arab tribes, Druze militia and armed gangs engaging in pitched battles and looting before a ceasefire was agreed.

The government troops then set up checkpoints and barricades encircling Sweida to prevent the Arab tribes re-entering.

The extrajudicial killing captured on CCTV inside the Sweida hospital is corroborated by eyewitnesses we spoke to who were among the group, as well as other medics in the hospital and a number of survivors and patients.

The CCTV is date- and time-stamped as mid-afternoon on 16 July and the different camera angles show the men (who tell the hospital workers they are government troops) marauding through the hospital; and in at least one case, smashing the CCTV cameras with the butt of a rifle.

One of the nurses present, who requested anonymity, told us: “They told us if we talked about the shooting or showed any film, we’d be killed too. I thought I was going to die.”

Dr Obeida Abu Fakher, a doctor who was in the operating section at the time, told us: “They told us they were the new Syrian army and interior police. We cannot have peace with these people. They are terrorists.”

Multiple patients and survivors told us when we visited the hospital last month that government troops had participated in the horror which swept through Sweida for days but this is the first visual evidence that some took part in atrocities inside the main hospital.

In other images, one of the men can be seen smashing the CCTV camera with the butt of his rifle – and another is wearing a black sweater which appears to be the uniform associated with the country’s interior security.

One survivor calling himself Mustafa Sehnawi, an American citizen from New Jersey, told us: “It’s the government who sent those troops, it’s the government of Syria who killed those people… we need help.”

The government responded with a statement from the interior ministry saying they would be investigating the incident which they “denounced and condemned” in the strongest terms.

The statement went on to promise all those involved would be “held accountable” and punished.

The new Syrian president Ahmed al Sharaa is due to attend the United Nations General Assembly next month in New York – the first time a Syrian leader has attended since 1967 – and what happened in Sweida is certain to be among the urgent topics of discussion.