Teenager who survived blast urges others to avoid mine dangers
After surviving a horrific landmine explosion, 15-year-old Nastia hopes her story will be a warning to other children in Ukraine.
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When 15-year-old Nastia learned that doctors had removed 30 pieces of shrapnel from her body following a landmine explosion last year, she knew she was lucky to be alive.
"If the shrapnel had struck my neck just half an inch to the left, it would have severed my carotid artery,” says Nastia, who lives in Ukraine’s Kharkivska region. “That would have been it – I wouldn't be here today. The hospital told me that I could consider 3 February as my second birthday.”
Ukraine is one of the most war-contaminated countries in the world. Now, after more than two years of the full-scale war, the situation has only worsened. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has confirmed that between 24 February 2022 and 29 February 2024, mines and other explosive devices caused 124 child casualties. Nearly half of these incidents occurred in the Donetska and Kharkivska regions, with 30 and 25 child casualties, respectively.
"My school is ruined, my house is destroyed"
Nastia was 13 years old when she saw a tank for the first time in her life. It stopped outside her front yard and pointed its muzzle in the direction of her home. It was February 2022, not long after the full-scale war had first broken out, and her hometown had become a battlefield. Even now, she struggles to fully comprehend the scale of the tragedy her country is going through.
"I live in Izium in the Kharkivska region,” says Nastia. “My town is 80 per cent destroyed. My school is ruined. All the schools in my town have been destroyed. Some schools were just burned to the ground. My house is destroyed as well. The plaster has fallen off, the ceiling is in pieces. It's very hard to live here.”
At the start of the war, Nastia, her sister and her parents hid from the shelling together.
"With seven of us, fitting into the basement wasn't possible,” says the teenager. “So we spread blankets on the floor and listened anxiously for the next shell. I held my nephews close, trying to calm them.”
She feels her childhood ended with the first bombing of Izium.
"I was scared,” says Nastia. “But I told my parents that everything would be all right, everything would be all right. That's how I found comfort, for them and for myself. Many say I grew up too fast, but maybe it was necessary.”
“I saw that my legs were covered in blood”
Red signs warning of landmines are everywhere in Izium. Some of Nastia’s favourite spots and even normal city routes have become inaccessible.
"Our forests, cemeteries and exits from the city are mined,” she says. “We don't go to the river because it's dangerous. We used to go mushrooming as a family, but now we don't. A boy from my school was picking mushrooms here in Izium, he was blown up, and now he has no leg.”
One Friday evening last year, Nastia met her friends in the town. But a simple evening took a terrifying turn when one of the boys pulled out an explosive device.
"Suddenly, my classmate revealed a flower-petal mine,” she recalls. “None of us were aware he had it. He quickly extracted the detonator, warning us it was about to detonate, and threw it. Then, there was a deafening explosion.”
Everything happened very fast. The only thing Nastia felt was a buzzing in her ears.
"For a minute, I was deaf. I was shocked and I blacked out. When I woke up, I saw my friend – she was covered in blood, she had lost consciousness three times."
In total, twelve children were injured in the explosion. Eight of them were hospitalised.
"When I saw that my legs were covered in blood, I became hysterical and cried,” says Nastia. “I touched my neck and felt that there was a piece of shrapnel in it. I started to panic and ran around asking everyone to pull it out. I felt like I didn't have enough breath, probably because of the shock.”
The next thing the youngster remembers is being in an ambulance, en route to the hospital, after bystanders called the paramedics. Thankfully, all of the children survived. However, many of their injuries required treatment and prolonged rehabilitation.
"It was painful to walk,” says Nastia, who spent a month recovering. “I had to be pushed around the hospital in a wheelchair. They gave me fever-reducing injections.”
“Our stories are a warning not to go near or touch mines”
Nastia touches the white scars on her legs, where pieces of metal from the detonator punctured her skin.
"I counted,” she says. “I had 23 shrapnel wounds on one leg, three on the other and one very large wound on my leg. I had one piece of shrapnel in my neck and three in my eyebrow.”
Today, as a result of her terrifying experience, Nastia is afraid of loud noises and avoids mined areas. After she graduates from school, she hopes to attend university in a big city where there are no mines or shelling. In the meantime, she tries to be careful.
"I know that teenagers in Izium suffer a lot from explosives,” she says. “Some think it's a joke, a toy. But what happened to us, the fact that a boy from my school lost his leg, should be taken into account. Our stories are a warning not to go near or touch mines.”
To keep children safe, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners continue to encourage mine safety across the country with:
- comics about the Mine Action Super Team;
- cartoons for children, including Safe Holidays (children aged 3-10 years), the Mine Action Super Team (children aged 8-16 years) and Patron the dog (children aged 4-16 years);
- informative posters and games.
Interactive materials and videos for group work, developed by UNICEF together with child psychologists and mine education experts, are also available, which explain to children in an easy-to-understand way how to behave safely in areas that may be contaminated by mines. These include:
- an interactive online lesson featuring Patron the dog and Dmytro Monatyk at the All-Ukrainian Online School for Distance Learning, adapted for junior and senior school children;
- a series of 10 educational videos with Patron the dog and sappers about types of explosive devices and safe behaviour in the aftermath of hostilities;
- a series of tips from psychologists for communicating with children about explosive devices;
- a brochure of tasks from the Mine Action Super Team for teenagers;
- mine safety puzzles for preschoolers, primary and secondary school students;
- a manual with detailed lesson plans and presentations for mine safety lessons adapted for primary and secondary schools.
All materials are available for download on the All About Mine Safety website and in the Spilnoteka, a library of useful materials.
Furthermore, in September 2023, UNICEF launched 15 mobile safety classrooms with special equipment to conduct classes in different regions of Ukraine. In these classes, representatives of the State Emergency Service and the National Police use interactive tools and formats developed by UNICEF to introduce children to vital topics such as mine safety, fire safety, home safety, traffic rules, winter safety, water safety and cybersecurity. The classes are being held in the Dnipropetrovska, Mykolaivska, Odeska, Zaporizhzhska, Poltavska, Kharkivska, Sumska, Kyivska, Zhytomyrska and Chernihivska regions, and the city of Kyiv.
In addition, UNICEF, together with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, is developing a mine safety workshop to ensure that every child knows the rules that save lives and health. A new course, How to Teach Mine Safety to Children, is available for educators, rescuers and police officers, focusing on effective mine safety education for children and adolescents, taking into account their age and psychological characteristics in an interactive way that meets international mine education standards.
The online course offers participants a thorough curriculum that is focused on instructing children and young individuals in the safe handling of explosive ordnance, adhering to global standards. It provides educators with practical resources to foster safety-conscious behaviours in regions. It also provides teachers with practical tools to promote safe behaviour in areas contaminated with mines and other explosive hazards. UNICEF has engaged experts in child and developmental psychology, pedagogy, inclusive education, mine awareness and behaviour change to help course participants become effective safety educators for children and adolescents. The course is available at bezpeka.info.
