The daughter searched for her 84-year-old mother for more than a month, both among the dead and among the living, and when she found it, it took half a year to return her mother from the occupied territory, TSN reports.

Zhanna Milashchenko, an 84-year-old teacher of German language and Ukrainian linguistics at Pryazovsky Technical University, known throughout the city, lived on the 8th floor at 117 Metalurgiv Avenue in Mariupol.

As long as it was possible, she kept a diary.

Like all residents of Mariupol, with a full-scale invasion, Zhanna Mykolayivna became a hostage of the Russian troops, who were methodically destroying the city.

"We wake up from the house shaking, shaking, shaking," the woman says.

On February 28, the connection disappears throughout the city and Zhanna Mykolayivna can no longer call her daughter in Kyiv.

From that day on, the struggle for survival begins.

An 84-year-old woman collects snow, melts it in order to have water, every time she goes outside is a risk, and on March 10, in the entrance, when she was going up to her 8th floor, a rocket hit between the second and fourth floors.

"I fell, I was hit on the head so much and I think, well, that's it. Blood is flowing from me, a complete seizure ran down my leg," the woman recalls.

She crawls up the broken steps to the apartment, bandages her wounds and lies down in the bath, and in 3 days a neighbor gets to her and calls her to the basement.

A wounded and exhausted woman leaves her home.

"My cat climbed out, I kissed the poor man, I was the last one to leave the entrance," says Zhanna Mykolayivna in tears.

When leaving the entrance, massive shelling begins.

Zhanna Nikolaevna gets a concussion and loses consciousness.

All this time, 700 kilometers from Mariupol in Kyiv, her daughter Oksana Milashchenko is not sleeping.

"I didn't stop searching day or night," says the woman.  

Home chats, calling acquaintances in Mariupol, government hotlines, contacts with volunteers and the Teroborona - and no news.

On March 18, it became known that there were 11 direct hits to the high-rise building at 117 Metalurgiv Avenue.

But the daughter feels that her mother is alive, and continues her search both among the dead and among the living.

And only a month later he gets the first clue.

"The neighbor's call on March 30. Mom is in the basement of the neighboring house and she is alive," the daughter recounts the conversation.  

After the complete occupation of Mariupol, the Russian military entered the basements and took people to the camps of the seaside villages.

Zhanna Mykolaivna is hospitalized in Mangush due to bleeding, but she is not treated, she is considered insane.

And Oksana finds a familiar name in the lists of this hospital and volunteers who go to see a woman who speaks Ukrainian and dreams in German - Oksana feels that this could be her mother.

"There was a woman lying in the corridors, poorly dressed, dirty, we approached her, Oksana is your mother. They were afraid to tell me in what condition she is," says the daughter.  

Oksana is asking for volunteers to take mum to Donetsk, the city where she lived until 2014.

And now, in order to see her mother, she overcomes a long and dangerous path to the "DNR".

"It was my mother, but a different person. She didn't walk, she didn't talk. She told me only one thing, leave me alone, let me die peacefully," the woman recalls.

Mother, who was an elegant, well-groomed, well-read woman all her life, turned, as Zhanna Mykolayivna herself says, into a log.

In Donetsk, Oksana taught her to walk, eat and read again.

As soon as Zhanna Mykolaivna got back on her feet, she asked to be taken to free Ukraine.

But the mad desire to return to Ukraine is hindered by the lack of documents.

All that remains from the past life - broken phones, a clock that has stopped and keys that will never open anything else.

Mother and daughter went through the Donetsk filtration system and the only way to return was through Russia, where they are being detained.

"They said that you need to get documents for temporary residence in the Russian Federation and you will no longer be able to leave because you are refugees," Oksana says.

On the territory of Russia, they are doing everything to prevent Ukrainians from the occupied territories from returning to Ukraine.

Oksana is interrogated, her biometric data is taken, her photos are taken and she is sent to a refugee camp with her mother, who barely walks.

Oksana decides to run away.

Friends from Crimea help with money for transport and they escape from the Russian camp to the occupied peninsula.

Oksana understands that she can return her mother only if she herself is in Ukraine.  

Oksana posted a photo of her mother with a poster in her hands - "I am a citizen of Ukraine" - on social media when she returned home.

The step of desperation worked, because this photo gets thousands of reposts and catches the eye of Ukrainian government officials.

"Prime Minister Denys Anatoliyovych sent me this photo in the evening," says Iryna Vereshchuk, Minister of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine.  

From this moment, the Crimean part of the special operation to return home begins.

In the occupied territory, our volunteers help Zhanna Mykolaivna to obtain a certificate of identification of a foreign citizen.

Iryna Vereshchuk urges not to be afraid of Russian documents when it comes to rescue.

"This is also the case when I, on the contrary, say that even if you take that Russian passport, just to leave and save yourself, it will not be a violation," she assures.  

Volunteers take Zhanna Mykolaivna to Minsk, where our consul is waiting for her with a certificate to return to Ukraine.

Thus, the journey of 6,000 kilometers and lasting half a year ended with the meeting of mother and daughter in free Ukraine.

"My mother's rescue is 50% a miracle of God, and 50% is the painstaking, hard work of these people. And maybe a little bit of my luck," Oksana says.  

This happy ending became a reality thanks to the daughter's boundless love for her mother.

And thanks to the steadfastness of the 84-year-old Ukrainian woman to her country.

"Thank God, I'm in Ukraine! Thank God, I'm at home," says Zhanna Mykolaivna.

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