From the attic of a three-story house, Kateryna Krupich and her two children watched with concern as the water rose, submerging everything in its path, after the destruction of the Kajovka dam. Until a drone left them a message. The family spent almost 24 hours without food or drinking water under the roof of a house on a badly flooded island near the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky.
When they were running out of hope, they heard the drone of a drone. Krupich, 40, realized that the artifact was Ukrainian. Desperate, she leaned out the window and raised both hands in prayer. “I taught them that there were three of us and that we had nothing to eat or drink,” she recalls to AFP. “Please help,” she requested.
The drone flew back and forth several times, delivering food and a message attached to a plastic bottle. “Hold on. Don’t panic. You will be evacuated. Santa,” the note read. Krupich burst into tears when he read the message. “It’s what we needed at the time,” he explains. “I decided to keep it to remember what we went through,” he says in the city of Kherson after his evacuation, along with his 12-year-old son and his eight-year-old daughter.
The family was rescued by a Ukrainian team on Wednesday night. And the video, where Krupich is seen calling for help, went viral on social media in the war-torn country.
Krupich and his children had been living under Russian occupation for more than a year. On the small island of Chaika, there were only a dozen people left. “We live all these months isolated from everyone,” said the mother. “We fished and ate the provisions that the neighbors allowed us to take from their houses.”
When the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam was destroyed on Tuesday, the island began to flood rapidly. Ukraine and Russia blamed each other for the destruction. Although the kyiv authorities rushed to launch rescue operations, many Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territories say they were left behind.
“The day they blew up the dam at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, I saw the Russians fleeing,” said Krupich, recalling the fear he felt as he watched the water rise faster and faster. “Four inches every half hour. Then another four inches, then another four inches,” he recounted.
The water was up to their ankles. Then to the knees. And little by little, the houses on the island were disappearing, with the flood dragging waste and debris. Given the dangerous situation, they decided to take shelter in the attic of a neighboring building.
Krupich’s family was rescued by a 31-year-old member of the Ukrainian border guard. He found them with his drone. The man, who goes by the name ‘Santa’, alluding to Father Christmas, operates a commercial drone that he uses for surveillance purposes.
It was the first time he used the aerial device to supply food and water, he said. “People call it a wedding drone,” she said. In peacetime, these types of drones are often used to capture images from the air, she added.
“In times of war, we learned to use it a little differently. Substituting a grenade for a bottle of water is not a problem, they weigh the same,” says Santa, his face covered in black cloth. Santa explained that he needs to remain anonymous due to his job, but revealed that he has a beard, hence the nickname for him.
For Krupich and his children, Santa is now their savior, even if his face cannot be seen. “He is my guardian angel,” said the mother of two children.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
