Putin’s troops shot me in the head and I said goodbye to my children, thinking I would die – now I have a message for Vlad
A UKRAINIAN mother who was shot in the head by Putin’s forces – but survived and went on to model for Playboy – has revealed her message to Mad Vlad.
Iryna Bilotserkovets lost an eye and had to undergo reconstructive surgery while she survived That of Russia brutal attack on Kiev.
7
7
7
7
7
Since then, she has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, appearing on the country’s front page Playboy magazine with a eye patch and metal bikini.
Iryna continues to model, but now wears sunglasses, a scarf or her hair covers her left eye.
Doctors were convinced she would die when they removed bullet fragments from her skull.
But Iryna miraculously pulled through even after saying goodbye to her children as she accepted her fate.
Some two years after Putin’s invasion on February 24, 2022, she remains in besieged Kiev.
Speaking to The Sun, she said: ‘Now there is war. Children, women and old people die.
“Leaders of other countries shake Putin’s hand and forget that this is a murderer who has been waging a cold-blooded war for eight years.
‘Today he has exceeded all acceptable limits’
She told us the Russian bombings Things are getting worse, her family is without electricity for days and she and her children run to underground bunkers almost every day.
And she warned that the nerves of the loyal Ukrainian people are beginning to shake amid Putin’s renewed attack.
“People are going crazy. They go off the rails,” she told The Sun.
Waking up to sirens and explosions, Iryna painfully admitted that her resolve is also wearing thin – and she’s starting to think about fleeing the Ukrainian capital.
But of course, she still bears the scars of her last attempt to leave.
Iryna initially tried to leave her home in the early days of the war when Russian bombs began falling and tanks poured across the border two years ago.
On February 26, 2022, Iryna had enough of hiding in the parking lot from the grenades and left on a journey to West-West. Ukraine – a region untouched by fighting at the time.
She took her three children with her: then ten-year-old David, five-year-old Dan and the youngest Dorian, who was only one.
The streets of the capital were unusually quiet and empty, except for a few Police cars – when the city was bustling with life days before.
It all changed overnight, as Russian soldiers slowly infiltrated the outskirts of Kiev.
“There was already a bit of a tense mood. There was panic in the air,” she explained.
“On the 26th the situation became so tense that the decision to leave was made.
“Now I realize it wasn’t right.”
Iryna didn’t realize the danger she posed the driving while trying to flee Kiev.
“I didn’t notice anyone beforehand, but then I heard a shot behind my car and assumed it was somewhere in the distance,” she recalls.
By the time Iryna realized her car was… goal of the Russians it was too late.
Within a split second, a bullet hit her in the head.
This horror somehow did not obscure my condition, because I just tried to live.
Iryna, Ukrainian mother
Bullets pierced the rear and left side windows of the vehicle, ricocheted and also smashed through the windshield.
She managed to stop the car as she dealt with the pain – and even said goodbye to her children before losing consciousness.
Iryna woke up a day later in a hospital bed, along with other wounded civilians who were also caught in the crossfire.
And the first thing she wanted to know was: what had happened to her children?
In an incredible heart attack Fortunately, a team of paramedics also passed by during the fighting and rushed to help Iryna and the children.
Iryna told The Sun: “The head doctor came to me and said everything that had happened to me, that my children were alive, that they were fine, that I had lost an eye, that I had a big, huge head wound that part of my face had been destroyed.”
The children were “miraculously unharmed” as bullet fragments were all over the car.
They took Iryna to the nearby public hospital and arranged for the children to be taken to their relatives.
For the next one For five days she was pumped full of strong painkillers and left on a ventilator, while Ukrainian doctors feared she would not pull through.
With the help of her family, she was then transported to a hospital in Düsseldorf, Germany where twenty doctors would greet her and care for Iryna until her recovery.
In March of the same year, the mother of three underwent surgery for ten hours straight.
She said: “Thanks to the German professor, I look as if I have only lost an eye.
‘But it’s not just an eye. It’s half of my face. It is stupid. The nerves are not fired.
“I’m not chewing the left side. That’s impossible.”
But the surgery was only halfway through recovery and the mother was put on liquid diets for a month.
She remembered the first time she opened her surviving eye and saw a glimpse of the sky.
The model didn’t think she would ever get her sight back.
Iryna said: “I was so happy with it, but I couldn’t see very well. I could see some parts of the building, but it was still hard to see.”
The operation left Iryna with many scars; her head was swollen and her face was initially unrecognizable.
But that didn’t bother the brave Ukrainian mother.
She said: “I was really happy that I survived because I said goodbye to the children.
“So against the backdrop of a survivorthis horror somehow it didn’t cloud my condition, because I was just trying to live.
“And seeing myself in the mirror when I’m dried up with a head like that [big]all drawn, my her cut short.
“Well, it was horrible, but my goal was to get back on my feet and live for my children.”
It took seven long weeks before she was finally reunited with her children.
Iryna’s boys stayed with her mother and sister in the town of Truskavets, west of Ukraine.
The mother recalled the emotional moment she hugged her sons.
She said: “It was such a moving moment, but the hardest part was my youngest son Dorian.
“He just didn’t recognize me because it was stressful for him and he subconsciously started calling my mother ‘Mom’ and he was very fond of her at that time.”
The toddler experienced immense stress and trauma after witnessing the horrific ideal – and it would take a while before he felt comfortable with his mother again.
Iryna said: “He saw me and ran away. It was of course a shock for me.
“I cried. After that, everything got better step by step, but from that moment on my mother was with us.”
After the trauma she endured two years ago, and the threats she still faces today, Iryna said she now has no strength to continue.
She said: “I am now weaker from these attacks than before. My reserves are not enough.
“This horror in which many people live here, continue to work and live under shelling. It’s terrible.”
7
7