Ukraine’s super gran: ‘I went into the wolf’s lair to save my grandson’
“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.
The remains of the house where Ilya had lived on the outskirts of Mariupol
‘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.
Olena with her daughter Natalya
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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.”
Olena’s daughter Natalya – Ilya’s mother – was buried in Mariupol
‘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.”
The desolation of Mariupol
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.
Ilya meets President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a hospital in Kyiv
“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.
Ilya has settled into his new home after returning to free Ukraine
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
27 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire while waiting for aid distribution, says Hamas-run Gaza health ministry
Twenty-seven Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting for aid to be distributed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
They were reportedly killed in the Rafah area of southern Gaza early on Tuesday.
The Hamas-run ministry claimed that more than 90 people were injured in what it called a “massacre”, with some of the wounded in a serious condition.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it fired “near a few individual suspects” who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots, about half a kilometre from the aid distribution site of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). It added that people were moving towards its forces in a way that “posed a threat to them”.
Later, IDF spokesperson Effie Defrin said accusations that the Israeli military shot at civilians were “completely unfounded and false”.
“We are debriefing this event, and we will find out the truth,” he added.
The media office of the Gaza government, which is run by Hamas, said in a statement that Israel was transforming aid distribution centres “into mass death traps and bloodbaths” with 102 people killed and 490 more injured in just eight days since the centres opened on 27 May.
The aid centres were “luring starving civilians to them as a result of the crippling famine”, said the media office, which called for humanitarian aid delivered through UN agencies and neutral international organisations rather than the GHF.
A woman reacts following the death of Palestinians near a aid distribution site in Rafah. Pic: Reuters
A child at the funeral of Palestinians killed in alleged Israeli fire. Pic: Reuters
The IDF said in a statement: “Earlier today (Tuesday), during the movement of the crowd along the designated routes toward the aid distribution site – approximately half a kilometre from the site – IDF troops identified several suspects moving toward them, deviating from the designated access routes.
“The troops carried out warning fire, and after the suspects failed to retreat, additional shots were directed near a few individual suspects who advanced toward the troops.”
Sky News pressed Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer on whether any of these individuals had weapons – but he failed to answer the question.
Mencer told Sky’s Kamali Melbourne: “The warning shots were fired away from the aid distribution point in response to the threat perceived by IDF troops.”
The GHF said in a statement on Tuesday: “While the aid distribution was conducted safely and without incident at our site today, we understand that IDF is investigating whether a number of civilians were injured after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone. This was an area well beyond our secure distribution site and operations area.
“We recognise the difficult nature of the situation and advise all civilians to remain in the safe corridor when travelling to our distribution sites. Questions regarding the potential incident should be referred to the IDF Spokesperson.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross said its field hospital in Rafah received 184 casualties. A spokesperson added that 19 of those were declared dead upon arrival, and eight died of their wounds shortly after.
There were three children and two women among the dead, according to Mohammed Saqr, who is the head of nursing at Nasser Hospital in Gaza.
A spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Jeremy Laurence, said: “For a third day running, people were killed around an aid distribution site run by the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’.”
Mr Laurence’s office said the impediment of access to food and relief for civilians in Gaza may constitute a war crime, describing attacks on civilians trying to access food aid as “unconscionable”.
An ambulance outside Nasser hospital in Gaza, where people allegedly injured by Israeli fire were taken
Palestinians arriving at Nasser hospital following alleged Israeli fire near an aid distribution site
The alleged shooting comes just two days after reports that 31 people were killed as they walked to a distribution centre run by the GHF in the Rafah area.
Witnesses said the deaths came after Israeli forces opened fire, while Palestinian and Hamas-linked media attributed the deaths they reported to an Israeli airstrike.
The IDF later said its forces “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false”.
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Surgeon describes working in Gaza
On Monday, three more Palestinians were reportedly killed by Israeli fire.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled” by reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid.
He called for an independent investigation and said: “It is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food.”
Two women cry during the funeral of Palestinians killed early Tuesday. Pic: Reuters
Palestinians arrived to collect aid from a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation hub in Rafah last week. File pic: Reuters
The IDF said that three of its soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday, in what appeared to be the deadliest attack on Israeli forces since the ceasefire with Hamas ended in March.
Officials said the soldiers, all in their early 20s, died in northern Gaza, with Israeli media reporting that they were killed in an explosion in the Jabaliya area.
Last week, Israel accepted a US-brokered ceasefire proposal, which would see the release over the course of a week of nine living hostages and half of the known hostages who have died.
But Hamas said that it was seeking amendments to the proposed 60-day truce, offering 10 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of 18 in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
There is a distinct moment when the tranquillity of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary envelops our car as we drive higher up the mountain.
The buzz of Freetown gives way to the hushed calm of this pocket of pristine rainforest reserved for critically endangered western chimpanzees rescued from across Sierra Leone.
The quiet is necessary. These bright primates – closest related to humans in the animal kingdom – are easily disturbed and the ones living in Tacugama are particularly sensitive.
The more than 120 chimpanzees brought here are traumatised survivors of mistreatment, hunting and violent separation from their families in the wild.
They are now facing another existential threat. Illegal encroachment is eating away at the edges of the conservation area. Despite wildlife laws, forest has been cleared to make way for houses being constructed closer and closer to chimp enclosures.
Forest has been cleared to make way for houses being constructed closer and closer to chimp enclosures
“We’ve been issuing several warnings over the last year,” says Tacugama founder Bala Amarasekaran. “Four months ago – again – we gave a warning. Then we had presidential intervention say that some of this encroachment will be stopped. It started very well for the first month then everything stopped again and we are back at square one. So, we are very tired and very stressed.”
Thirty years ago, Mr Amarasekaran appealed to the government to donate land and partner with him to create a sanctuary for the protection of the abused orphaned chimps he was finding across Freetown. Today, land in the Western Area Forest Reserve is being grabbed right under the government’s nose.
“The government has been very good in terms of helping us in every way – however we expect the leadership to be more firm,” says Mr Amarasekaran.
“When we talk to them, they are all with us. They all want to help. But when it comes to action it looks like some of the departments that have the mandate to institute certain laws and take the necessary law enforcement action are not acting.”
Tacugama founder Bala Amarasekaran
Sanctuary closes its doors to focus on conservation, rehabilitation and research
Tacugama has grown to become Sierra Leone’s most popular tourist attraction over the last three decades. But in a stand against the fast-approaching illegal encroachment, the sanctuary has closed its doors to visitors to focus on conservation, rehabilitation and research.
“It is not a tourist attraction – we made it become a tourist attraction. It is supposed to be an orphanage for rescued chimpanzees,” Mr Amarasekaran says.
“They are used to us and some visitors but they will start to see strangers come and that is where the problems start. They are not comfortable with strangers – don’t forget it is the stranger who killed their mother. It is the stranger that wiped out their group.”
‘A complex problem’
We asked Sierra Leone’s government spokesperson and minister of information and civic education, Chernor Bah, about the illegal encroachment.
“It is a complex problem. You have a city that is growing. People need places to stay and we have not done the best job in terms of enforcing all these limitations,” he replied. “Some of our agents seem to have been complicit in allocating and giving people land in places they are not supposed to stay. So, I don’t think I can sit here and say we have done enough – there is much more we can do.
“[Tacugama] is probably our most cherished and significant wildlife asset in the country.”
A national symbol for tourism
In 2019, the government designated the western chimpanzee as the national animal and national symbol for tourism. The image of a chimp is now etched in Sierra Leonean passports, a result of Tacugama’s advocacy Mr Amarasekaran and his team hope will entrench a love and respect for chimps that will curb the need for intervention.
“We wanted something more – that is how the national animal bill came through,” says Mr Amarasekaran.
“We thought if the agencies that are mandated to do all the law enforcement are not active and effective, then maybe we need to create a synergy between the people and the animals.”
Chimpanzees hunted for bushmeat
But chimpanzees are still being hunted as bushmeat for food across Sierra Leone and baby chimps are being torn from their families to be kept as illegal pets. Tacugama’s latest rescue is only eight months old.
Baby Asana is frail with thinning hair and is being nursed back to health by his chimp mum, Mama P, when we meet him. He was rescued after an informant sent a video of Asana wearing human clothes and being mistreated as an illegal pet in Bo, Sierra Leone’s second largest city.
“For me as the founder of the sanctuary, I feel defeated,” says Mr Amarasekaran with Asana being cared for behind him.
“These chimps shouldn’t be arriving here if we have done enough work outside – there shouldn’t be any killings, there shouldn’t be any rescues. That is the time when I can say that I achieved something.”
Research from the Jane Goodall Institute identified that between five and 10 chimpanzees die for every surviving rescued chimpanzee. And with the sanctuary closed, much-needed public advocacy work will take a hard hit.
‘Until I came to the sanctuary, I didn’t see a chimpanzee’
“I’m really concerned because I only even started to experience chimpanzees when I started working here. I knew that we had chimps here. But until I came to the sanctuary, I didn’t see a chimpanzee,” says 25-year-old Tacugama communications officer, Sidikie Bayoh.
“Now, we are at a situation where we are closed indefinitely but what if this becomes something wherein we can never open the sanctuary again for people to visit? Then you will have all these young Sierra Leoneans never fully understanding what their national animal is.”
Tacugama communications officer Sidikie Bayoh
The closure also means there will be no revenue from visitors at a time when USAID funding has been halted.
“In the absence of funding from – at the moment – the US government, it is going to be difficult for us to turn around quickly,” says Mr Amarasekaran.
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He then shrugs and smiles knowingly, adding: “We are very resilient – we are like chimpanzees. So, we will manage somehow.”
World
Madeleine McCann: New search under way brings fresh hope – but there are big unanswered questions
Dense shrubs, empty barns, disused wells and dirt tracks – the police here have got their work cut out if they’re to find evidence relating to Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.
At 6am, before police cordons were put up, we spoke with an officer – a balaclava covering his face – manning one of the forensic tents.
“It’s a large area,” he told me. “A different place will be searched each day.”
Follow latest: New search for Maddie could be ‘last throw of dice’
A police officer in Praia da Luz where authorities are searching for Madeleine McCann
Gusty winds blow up dust on the dirt tracks. The land is used by dog walkers and hikers, and is sparsely populated.
But as the crow flies, it’s only a mile or so from where the three-year-old was last seen while on holiday with her family in Praia da Luz in 2007.
As we stood by the police van, out for his morning run was Tony Gallagher, a Brit who has lived within this new search area for 20 years.
He remembers when it all happened.
“I know for a fact that they searched up here 20 years ago,” he said.
“I’m not sure what they’re hoping to find, because even locals were searching.”
Tony Gallagher said police and locals had searched the same area 20 years ago
It’s one of the big unanswered questions: Just what intelligence is this latest search based on? Has someone come forward?
“It feels strange, you know,” Tony adds.
“I think it will be for the people in Praia da Luz… because it had a whole negative impact there 20 years ago in terms of business and tourists coming and everything.
“And I hope for the locals that doesn’t happen again.”
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Timeline of the McCann case
At 9am, two vans and three cars arrived – all with German number plates. Inside, police – some in camouflage uniforms – were ready to begin the search.
Police in Germany had asked officials in Portugal for access back in April, so this has been in the planning for weeks.
Madeleine’s disappearance is one of the most high-profile missing-person investigations in the world.
It’s why every new search brings the world’s media.
Members of the media report on the new search
At one point, more than 20 journalists were broadcasting live alongside us, lining the road opposite the police.
While this new search brings fresh hope, journalists and, more importantly, Kate and Gerry McCann have been here before, many times.
Around two years ago, a dam about 45 minutes from here was searched, but nothing was found.
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In May, on the anniversary of these tragic events, her parents said they will leave “no stone unturned” in the search for their daughter.
Eighteen years on, it is a poignant moment – Madeleine would have turned 22 last month.
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