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

Hamas official thanks Donald Trump for peace deal – but tells Sky News Tony Blair not welcome

Published

4 hours ago

October 10, 2025

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Hamas official thanks Donald Trump for peace deal - but tells Sky News Tony Blair not welcome

A senior Hamas official has thanked President Donald Trump for his role in securing a peace deal with Hamas.

In an exclusive interview with Sky News’ lead world news presenter Yalda Hakim, senior Hamas official Dr Basem Naim also warned that former UK Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair would not be welcome in any post-war role for Gaza.

Dr Naim said a ceasefire would not have been possible without President Trump, but insisted he needed to continue to apply pressure to Israel to stick to the agreement.

He added that Hamas would be willing to step aside for a Palestinian body to govern a post-war Gaza, but that they would remain “on the ground” and would not be disarmed.

Dr Naim said in the interview: “Without the personal interference of President Trump in this case, I don’t think that it would have happened to have reached the end of the war.

“Therefore, yes, we thank President Trump and his personal efforts to interfere and to pressure Netanyahu to bring an end to this massacre and slaughtering.”

He added: “We believe and we hope that President Trump will continue to interfere personally and to exercise the maximum pressure on [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to fulfil the obligation.

“First, as according to the deal, and second, according to the international law as an occupying power, because I think without this, without this personal interference from President Trump, this will not happen.

“We have already seen Netanyahu speaking to the media, threatening to go to war again if this doesn’t happen, if that doesn’t happen.”

Dr Naim said that weapons would only be handed over to the Palestinian state, with fighters integrated into the Palestinian National Army.

He reiterated that Hamas would not disarm as this could not guarantee the safety of Palestine.

Dr Naim said: “Our weapons are going to be handed over only to the hands of a Palestinian state, and our fighters can be integrated into the Palestinian National Army.

“No one has the right to deny us the right to resist the occupation of armies.”

He added: “We are not going to be disarmed as long as we are not sure that this will lead, by any other means, to having an independent self state which is able to defend itself.”

But he criticised plans for Sir Tony to play any role in the future of Gaza, saying that Hamas and Palestinians were angered by his role in previous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Dr Naim added: “When it comes to Tony Blair, unfortunately, we Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe others around the world have bad memories of him.

“We can still remember his role in killing, causing thousands or millions of deaths to innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We can still remember him very well after destroying Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Under Mr Trump’s plans, Sir Tony would form part of an international supervisory body.

The international body, the Council of Peace or Board of Peace, would govern under plans approved by Mr Netanyahu.

The body would hold most power while overseeing the administration of Palestinian technocrats running day-to-day affairs.

It would also hold the commanding role of directing reconstruction in Gaza.

Dr Naim added that Hamas was satisfied Mr Trump’s plan would achieve peace in Gaza.

But he said it could never be fully satisfied after accusing Israel of genocide.

Israel has continually denied this, claiming it has been fighting Hamas terrorists to defend itself following the October 7 massacre in 2023.

On that day, Hamas gunmen stormed southern Israel killing 1,200 people and taking many Israelis hostage.

World

Could the Gaza deal lead to something even bigger?

Published

4 hours ago

October 10, 2025

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Could the Gaza deal lead to something even bigger?

This is a historic moment for the Middle East. The coming days will be crucial.

Critical for the immediate success of Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan. But also for hopes it could lead to something even more important, progress towards a broader peace.

There is plenty that could still go wrong. But so far so good.

Follow the latest updates on the Gaza ceasefire deal

Hamas seems ready to give up its hostages believing American assurances Israel will not start the war again when they have.

And Israel is withdrawing its forces on the lines outlined in the deal.

If the deal does hold then what next?

Here are the most pressing questions.

What becomes of Hamas? It is meant to disarm and not be part of any future government in Gaza. What if it goes back on that? What if it retreats to the shadows, regroups and rearms and goes back to its old ways?

Then, who is going to keep the peace? The plan is for an international peacekeeping force overseen by the Americans but not involving US troops on the ground, using soldiers from Arab countries and Turkey instead.

Will that force materialise and will it be effective? The history of peacekeeping operations in the region is not an encouraging one.

Then how is Gaza going to be run?

There’s been talk of a government of technocrats, people who know how to get things done, and of an oversight board run by President Trump, and of Tony Blair coming in as governor.

It will be a massive task. Rebuilding Gaza will cost billions of dollars and at the moment plans seem vague at best.

It could all come unstuck.

But then again, there are reasons for some optimism. Could this breakthrough lead to more sustained progress in efforts to build a lasting peace?

October 7th and the events that followed it including the Gaza war have changed so much in the Middle East.

Events have laid bare the utter futility of the past.

Israel’s policy of dividing and ruling the Palestinians and weakening them so they could never form their own state has ended in tragedy and colossal failure.

Hamas has brought its people nothing but misery and carnage.

There is on both sides a yearning for a new start.

There is also an American president who is prepared to put massive pressure on Israel unlike his predecessors and who is hungry for peace.

The region is lining up to push the chances of peace. President Trump has galvanised the likes of Turkey, Egypt and nations in the gulf.

In Israel there may be a fresh start. Its hardline right-wing government might have to give way to new leaders with new ideas.

And the country most likely to wreck the chances of progress, Iran, is massively weakened, pummelled by Israeli air power, and its allies and proxies humbled.

We should not over-egg the chances of further progress. In this rough neighbourhood there is always a multitude of reasons why this multi-stage deal might still fall apart, let alone lead to a much bigger peace.

But there is a chance now. The past two years have broken up the Middle East and so many of its old rules of operating. Putting it back together offers an opportunity.

It will require a huge amount of political will and leadership but there is the chance however slim of remaking the region in a way that gives its people a better future.

World

Tennessee: Multiple people killed and others missing after explosion at military munitions plant

Published

5 hours ago

October 10, 2025

admin

Tennessee: Multiple people killed and others missing after explosion at military munitions plant

Multiple people have been killed and others are missing after an explosion at a Tennessee military munitions plant.

Secondary explosions have forced rescuers back from the burning site at Accurate Energetic Systems, according to the Hickman County Sheriff’s Office.

Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis told a news conference: “We do have several people at this time unaccounted for.

“We are trying to be mindful of families and that situation. We do have some folks. We can confirm that we do have some that are deceased.”

The cause of the blast, which occurred at 7.45am on Friday (1.45pm in the UK), was not immediately known.

Video from the scene showed flames and smoke billowing from a field of debris.

Emergency crews were initially unable to enter the Tennessee plant because of continuing explosions, Hickman County Advanced MT David Stewart said.

Residents in Lobelville, a 20-minute drive from the scene, told the Associated Press that they felt their homes shake and some people captured the loud boom of the explosion on their home cameras.

Gentry Stover, who was woken from his sleep by the blast, said: “I thought the house had collapsed with me inside of it.

“I live very close to Accurate and I realised about 30 seconds after I woke up that it had to have been that.”

According to its website, Accurate Energetic Systems manufactures products for the defence, aerospace, demolition, and oil and gas industries

It adds that the company makes and tests explosives at an eight-building facility that sprawls across wooded hills near Bucksnort, a town about 60 miles southwest of Nashville.