Nina Ivanova, 77, Walks 9 Miles to Flee Besieged Lyman

Q: How did a 77-year-old woman survive a nine-mile trek through skies swarming with lethal drones after rescuers abandoned her ruined city?

She survived by making a desperate calculation that staying in Lyman was no safer than leaving, then walking out with her two daughters when formal evacuations had stopped. Nina Ivanova, 77, had been hiding in a basement after her home was destroyed, with Russian forces reported less than a mile away and the city under relentless glide-bomb and drone attacks. She said her odds of survival felt “50/50” whether she stayed or fled. The death of her husband, the collapse of basic shelter, and the sight of a corpse being eaten by dogs convinced her that remaining in the city was untenable. With rescue teams no longer entering Lyman because of the danger, the three women had only one option: go on foot. They walked about nine miles through an area where drones filled the sky, moving out of a city that had become part of a wider frontline “kill zone” in eastern Ukraine, where roads, crossings and civilian movement are routinely targeted. Her survival appears to have depended on timing, endurance and sheer luck rather than any protected corridor. Reporting on the wider battlefield shows that civilians around Lyman increasingly face exactly this kind of choice as drone warfare, bombardment and attacks on logistics routes cut off organized evacuation. Ivanova’s escape was not a managed rescue so much as a self-evacuation under extreme risk, undertaken because the danger of waiting had become equal to the danger of moving.

1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 21

Nina Ivanova, 77, left Lyman on foot with her two daughters, trekking nine miles under drone-filled skies after deciding her chances of survival were "50/50" whether they stayed or fled.
Russian forces were just over a mile away, pounding the eastern Ukrainian city with glide bombs and drones, while Ivanova's home had been destroyed and her husband had already died after a long illness.
Civilian and military evacuation teams no longer entered Lyman because of the danger, leaving walking as the only escape route from a city Ivanova described as burning.
Lyman, a prewar rail hub of about 20,000 in the Donbas, has been a prime target since Russia's 2022 invasion because control of the region remains a central war aim.