It was from the attic, at the top of a three-storey house, that Katerina Krupich and her two children saw, with horror, the water released by the Kakhovka dam climbing inexorably towards them.
They had taken refuge there, without water or food, when their small island of Chaika, on the Dnieper, began to be submerged after the destruction of the dam, in the south of Ukraine.
But when most of the house was engulfed by the waves and they were beginning to lose hope, they heard the roar of a drone above them.
Katerina, 40, remembers immediately realizing it was a Ukrainian drone. She then called for help, leaning out the window and raising both hands in prayer.
“I show them that there are three of us and that we have nothing left to eat or drink. Please help us,” she says, in tears.
The drone made several round trips, delivering food and a message taped to a plastic bottle: “Hold on. Don’t panic. You will be evacuated. Santa Claus”.
Katerina burst into tears upon reading the note.
“I decided to keep it, to remember what we went through,” she says from the city of Kherson, where she was evacuated with her two children.
The family was rescued on Wednesday evening by a Ukrainian rescue team.
The video of the mother calling for help, filmed by Ukrainian border guards, has gone viral on social media in the war-torn country.
The Krupichs lived under Russian occupation for more than a year. Only a dozen people remained on the tiny island of Chaika, near the Russian-occupied town of Olechky.
“We lived all these months cut off from the world,” she says.
“We fished and ate the food that the neighbors let us take from their homes.”
With the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on Tuesday, for which kyiv and Moscow blame each other, the island quickly began to be submerged.
The floods that followed affected both areas under Ukrainian control and those under Russian occupation on both banks of the Dnieper, killing several people and injuring dozens.
“I saw the Russians flee,” says Katerina.
The water was rising very quickly: “Ten centimeters every half hour, and another 10 cm, and another 10 cm”.
The water reached his ankles, then his knees. The houses on the island were slowly disappearing, the waves carrying rubbish and debris in its path.
When it proved too dangerous to stay in their one-story house, the family took refuge in a neighboring three-story house. Upstairs in the attic.
“It was scary to see the water go up to the windows. Then it reached the roof, and the roof began to disappear in turn”.
They were saved when a 31-year-old Ukrainian border guard spotted them with his drone.
The one who signed “Santa Claus” was handling a DJI Mavic 3, a commercial drone used for surveillance since the start of the war.
Using his drone to drop food through a small roof window was a first, he says.
“People call it a wedding drone,” he explains, noting that in times of peace it is used to shoot very high quality video.
“In times of war, we learned to use it a little differently. Replacing a grenade with a bottle of water is no problem, they have the same weight,” he says, his face covered in a mask.
He explains that he needs to preserve his anonymity because of his activities in the field. He only revealed to have a beard, hence his signature.
For Katerina and her children, this Santa Claus in camouflage uniforms is their savior.
“He is my guardian angel,” she says.
But the border guard assures that he only did his job.
“When you see a woman with two minor children, you make decisions immediately”, explains “Santa Claus”, smiling behind his mask.
06/10/2023 18:58:02 – Kherson (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
