Ukrainian who symbolised outbreak of war regains her sight

A Ukrainian woman whose bandaged and blood-stained face became a defining image of the Russian invasion has returned to work as a teacher after surgery that saved her sight.

Olena Kurylo, 52, who is half-Russian, appeared on newspaper front pages around the world, including The Times, after her apartment block on the outskirts of Kharkiv was hit by an explosion on the first day of the offensive, showering her with broken glass and damaging her right eye.

She escaped the siege and travelled to Katowice in southern Poland, where surgeons partially restored her damaged eye with an injection of silicone oil.

The trained choreographer has now begun holding art classes for Ukrainian refugee children in Poland.

“I forget I am in Poland and my worries disappear when I do this,” Kurylo told The Mail on Sunday, which had helped to put her in touch with aid workers and leading eye specialists. “I have a lot of love in my soul and I want to give it to the children. They give me a joy I haven’t had since the war started.”

Early on the morning of February 24 Kurylo and her husband, Mykola, were awoken by a series of blasts as the first Russian missiles landed on a military airfield near their flat in Chuhuiv.

While Mykola went to fill their car with petrol so they could flee, Olena gathered their identity papers and briefly sat down in their bedroom.

A missile landed about 70ft from their apartment, next to the space where the Kurylos usually parked their car. The pressure wave shattered the window, leaving hundreds of glass splinters lodged in Olena’s eye and her skin.

As she staggered out of the building to seek medical help she was pictured by the American photographer Wolfgang Schwan, whose image was seized upon as an early symbol of the human cost of the Russian attack.

The Kurylos initially sought refuge in a cabin in the woods outside the town, sheltering in the basement for 12 days. “We could feel the shockwaves from the explosions. I didn’t dare leave,” she said afterwards.

After a fortnight a lorry driver offered Kurylo a lift back into central Kharkiv so that she could take the train to Poland by way of Dnipro and Lviv, while her husband stayed behind to look after his paralysed mother.

Kurylo said she was affected by post-traumatic stress and nightmares, and that the children in her art classes also bore the psychological marks of the violence.

“They either draw the war or how their life was before, with their house or their mother and father, as well as their dreams and hopes for peace,” she said. “The girls prefer pictures of their mothers and the boys draw war machines.”