“It was very fast”: Kramatorsk attack’s sole journalist survivor speaks about russia’s attack

A seriously injured special correspondent of the Freedom TV channel, Oleksandr Kolychev, regained consciousness in the Dnipro intensive care unit. He is the only survivor of the film crew that was attacked by a drone in Kramatorsk on October 23. Correspondent Aliona Hramova and cameraman Yevhen Karmazin were killed in the attack. They were filming the consequences of the shelling of the city when the russian Lancet drone hit them, according to the TSN story.

The Lancet hit the film crew directly – it all happened in the center of Kramatorsk on October 23. The three of them were filming the consequences of the attacks in the city. They had just stopped at a battered gas station. Everything happened instantly, recalls Oleksandr Kolychev. “It was very fast, almost without a sound. At the last split second, I heard something from the sound, but I caught myself with the feeling that I had flown somewhere. The sound disappeared, and I could not hear, I could not feel the left part of my body, my face, my ear, my hand,” he says.

His colleagues, Aliona Hramova and Yevhen Karmazin, were standing a few steps away from him at the time of the impact. He learned about the death of his friends he had worked with for many years in the Donetsk Region, in the intensive care unit.

“I saw almost nothing. Only spots. Therefore, I could not know what was happening to my team, where they were, or how they were. I have never seen such a resonant team in a good sense. I have never worked with anyone as well as I have in my life. We became friends as a team, as friends,” says Oleksandr Kolychev.

The doctors did not give any predictions that Oleksandr would be saved, because his injuries were extremely severe.

“He was brought to our hospital with a third-degree contusion, massive blood loss, and enough shrapnel to kill at least ten people,” the doctor says. Five surgeries, a lot of blood transfusions — the Freedom TV channel’s special correspondent is finally breathing on his own. Doctors have reassembled the broken bones of his legs so that Oleksandr can walk. They are now trying to save his eyesight. He still has a long road ahead of him in his recovery. His wife and children are waiting for him at the hospital.