Fifteen-year-old Liza Chernichenko was shot four times in the legs while trying to drive two injured passengers to a hospital in Donetsk region. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC) As 15-year-old Liza Chernichenko pressed on the gas pedal while frantically driving through the Donetsk region, she realized she had been shot in both legs, but with four others in the car, including two men bleeding profusely, she kept driving, even as Russian forces continued firing “There was no fear, there was no shock,” said Chernichenko, who spoke to CBC from her hospital bed in Lviv. “There was just a determination to go forward.” Chernichenko, who had planned to hunker down with her godmother and try to wait out the relentless barrage near her community of Komyshuvakha, ended up fleeing after two men were injured in an attack needed someone to drive them to the hospital. Her dramatic escape on May 1 came as Russian forces stepped up their assault on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where they aim to seize a greater chunk of Donetsk and Luhansk, along with gaining full control of Mariupol, where an unspecified number of Ukrainian fighters remain at the Azovstal steel plant. On Saturday, Ukrainian officials confirmed that all women, children and the elderly had been evacuated from the sprawling Soviet-era steel plant, while other residents from besieged areas In Ukraine’s east continue to make harrowing journeys west out of the immediate war zon
via cbc: Fleeing through gunfire: Evacuees from Eastern Ukraine recount harrowing escapes