A Ukrainian boy who was shot at point blank range during Russia’s invasion of his country has miraculously survived.
The 16-year-old civilian victim, whose name has not been identified, was shot in the back of the head from a Soviet pistol from just six inches away.
In the botched execution-style shooting, the 9mm bullet entered her neck, grazed the tip of her spine, and lodged in her upper jaw.
The teenager was taken to a hospital in the central Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia and has surprisingly made a full recovery.
A head and neck X-ray showed the bullet had lodged in the 16-year-old Ukrainian boy’s skull.
The bullet the doctors removed measured 9mm x 18mm.
His story was revealed in the American Journal of Case Reports by doctors from the Pirogov Memorial National Medical University.
The boy’s face was twisted as the left side of his face and neck were swollen and he was unable to open his mouth fully or raise his left arm due to spinal cord damage.
Looking at his 6mm gunshot wound, doctors estimated that he had been shot about 15cm from a Makarov pistol.
The report did not explicitly say that a Russian soldier fired the weapon, but throughout the war there have been reports of Russian military men carrying out execution-style killings of civilians, including children.
The Ukrainian boy had an X-ray and was fitted with a neck brace to ensure his head and neck stayed in place.
During surgery, doctors made an incision in his lower jaw, dissected the soft tissue in the area, and removed the bullet casing from his skull.
They then treated the site with an antiseptic solution, drained the wound, and stitched it up.
The boy was discharged from the hospital nine days after surgery.
He was recommended to continue with the ‘sanatorium-restorative treatment according to the individual rehabilitation plan’.
The boy was treated at the Pirogov Memorial National Medical University hospital in Vinnytsia in central Ukraine.
Observing the teenager’s wounds, doctors estimated that he had been shot about 15 cm with a Makarov pistol.
The main principles of the sanatorium diet are fresh air, exercise and good nutrition.
He also had post-op physiotherapy.
According to Ukraine’s top war crimes prosecutor, more than 100,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed during the Russian invasion.
That’s ten times the current official death toll of 8,000.
The siege of the port city of Mariupol alone is believed to have caused more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilian deaths.
Meanwhile, Russian casualties are estimated at 200,000.
Last week, a furious Vladimir Putin condemned the International Criminal Court’s ‘outrageous’ decision to issue an arrest warrant for him for war crimes in Ukraine.
The ICC called for Putin’s arrest and accused the despot of committing war crimes by kidnapping Ukrainian children from their homes and deporting them to Russia to give them to Russian families.
It also issued an arrest warrant for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Russia’s ‘Child Rights Commissioner’, on the same charges.
The Kremlin called the court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Putin “scandalous and unacceptable”; on the contrary, Ukraine applauded the decision, saying that ‘the wheels of justice are turning’.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said hundreds of Ukrainian children have been taken from orphanages and children’s homes to Russia.
He said: ‘Many of these children, we allege, have since been given up for adoption in the Russian Federation.’
United Nations data showed that more than 7,199 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 11,756 wounded since Russia’s invasion.
