The teacher and mom whose bloodied face became one of the early defining images of the invasion of Ukraine called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the “meaningless war” Saturday in a new interview.
“Please, get the message across that Ukraine does not want to harm anyone. Ukraine is a very friendly nation,” Olena Kurilo, 52, said. “Our mothers will lose their children, old people and children will die, ordinary people will die innocent of anything.”
Kurilo emerged from the hospital Thursday in Chuguev, outside the city of Kharkiv, when journalists captured a photo of her, covered in bandages after a missile strike sent shards of window glass flying into her face.
Her home had been completely destroyed by a Russian missile strike and she said at the time she was only alive due to a “very strong guardian angel.”
In her new interview, she told the Daily Mail she made a direct plea to Putin, who she singlehandedly blames for the war.
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“I don’t know anyone who would like to go to war with Russia. Not a single person thought that Putin could do this,” she said, adding she thought Putin would stop when he recognized Donetsk and Luhansk regions, collectively known as the Donbas, as Russian-backed independent people’s republics. “’I understand that we are pawns in the game between Russia and the United States. We are a bargaining chip, but the world has turned upside down.”
Kurilo said she and her family are afraid, as are her neighbors. “We don’t know what will happen to our home,” she said.
“I call on all mothers in Russia not to let their children go to war,” she said in a grave appeal. “This is a meaningless war, it will not bring happiness to anyone, it will not make anyone richer.”
“We want peace. War is grief, it is human grief,” she said.