Global Courant
Kateryna Krupich and her two children climbed into the attic of a three-story house and watched in horror as the water from a destroyed dam in southern Ukraine swallowed the floors below them.
The family was stranded under the roof of a neighbor’s house on a heavily flooded island near the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky for nearly 24 hours without food and drinking water.
With most of the house being inundated by floodwaters, they lost hope when they heard the buzz of a drone overhead.
Krupich, 40, recounted her ordeal through her tears, telling AFP she realized it was a Ukrainian drone.
The desperate mother leaned out the window and raised both hands in a gesture of prayer.
“I show them that there are three of us here and we have nothing to eat or drink. Please help,” she said.
The drone flew back and forth several times to deliver food supplies — and taped a message to a plastic bottle.
‘Hold on. Do not panic. You are being evacuated. Santa,” the note read.
Krupich burst into tears when she read the note.
“I decided to keep it to remember what we went through,” she said in the city of Kherson after she, her 12-year-old son and four-year-old daughter were evacuated.
“This is what we needed at the time.”
– ‘I saw Russians fleeing’ –
The family was rescued by a Ukrainian team on Wednesday evening.
The video of Krupich begging for help — shot by the Ukrainian border guard — went viral on social media in the war-torn country.
Krupich and her children lived under Russian occupation for more than a year. Only a dozen people were left on the small island of Chaika.
“We’ve been living cut off from everyone for all these months,” she said.
“We fished and ate supplies that neighbors allowed us to take from their homes.”
When the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam was breached on Tuesday, the island began to flood.
While Ukrainian authorities quickly launched a rescue operation, many living in Russian-controlled territory say they have been left to fend for themselves.
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“The day the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam was blown up, I saw the Russians fleeing,” Krupich said.
Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of causing the split.
Krupich said she was afraid to see the water level rise so quickly.
“4 inches every half hour. Then another 4 inches, then another 4 inches,” she said.
The water was up to their ankles, then up to their knees. The houses on the island slowly disappeared and the floodwaters carried waste and debris with them.
It was dangerous to stay in their one-story house, so they moved into a neighboring three-story building and hid in the attic.
“It was scary to see windows go under water,” said Krupich, referring to her own home.
“Then the water reached the roof and then the roof covering started to disappear.”
– ‘Guardian angel’ –
Her family was rescued by a 31-year-old member of the Ukrainian Border Guard who spotted them using his drone.
The serviceman, who identified himself by his call sign Santa, pilots a commercial drone used for monitoring purposes during Ukraine’s war effort.
Using his aerial vehicle to drop food supplies into a small skylight was a first for Santa, he said.
“People call it a wedding drone,” he said, adding that such drones are usually used in peacetime to capture expansive images from above.
“In wartime, we learned to use it a little differently. Replacing a grenade with a bottle of water is no problem, they weigh the same,” said Santa Claus, his face covered with a mask.
Santa said he had to remain anonymous due to his job, but revealed he has a beard – hence his nickname.
Krupich and her children see the camouflage-clad Santa Claus as their savior.
“He’s my guardian angel,” she said.
But Santa says he was just doing his job.
“When you see a mother with two minor children, you immediately make a decision,” said Santa, smiling behind his mask.
“You are focusing all your efforts on helping this family.”
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