History repeats for 90-year-old Ukrainian in bomb shelter who fled Nazis as a child

ITV News Global Security Editor Rohit Kachroo speaks to the families taking refuge underneath the streets of Ukraine's capital


Nadezhda Panteleevna walks a circuit of the school gym turned underground bunker in Kyiv which has been her home for three nights.

But aged 90 and still suffering from a foot injury suffered during the Second World War, she moves slowly, creeping around the obstacles - a ping-pong table for the secondary school pupils who normally use these halls and the piles of bedding, fruits and crisps brought in by the people who use it now.

Children are among the 30 people hunkered down in the makeshift shelter Credit: ITV News

"We are hiding here because of the airstrikes and they can bomb us," she says of Russia.

"We don’t know how much longer we will be here. Why is this happening, why do they want to put us through so much suffering?"

She was around the age of some of the youngsters in this subterranean shelter when she smashed her foot escaping the Nazis with her parents.


"I survived the war in 1945, and this now. What is this for?"

A large plank of wood fell onto her as she rushed to hide inside a warehouse.

"I have survived another war - back in the 1940s I hid in the woods and in a cellar," she recalls.

"My leg was broken and I can still feel it, it still aches. And now this has happened unexpectedly. We are in our own land, we don’t want to go anywhere, we are not asking for anything. And what do they ask from us? I do not understand."


"I have children left in Vinnytsia and now I’m here alone. I got separated from my children"


Nadezhda is the eldest of around 30 people from the same neighbourhood who have brought food and blankets to sleep in relative safety at the makeshift shelter. Some leave just after sunrise, others feel safer to stay the whole day.The youngest is a one-year-old child, whose daytime sleep patterns force the other residents to lower their voices for an hour every now and then.

Those in the bunker have no idea how long they will need to stay Credit: ITV News

Most of the time there is a constant murmur of noise. Giggling older children draw and play chess, teenagers stare at their smart phones, some sharing patriotic memes and videos of Ukrainian forces fighting in Kharkiv.

It is left to the grown ups, of course, to wonder what happens next.


"What did this innocent child do to Putin?"


"Here underground we have a girl who is aged one,” says Neolina, another evacuee who seems to have taken on a role managing logistics over the four nights she has been here.

"I have a question to Putin, what did this innocent child do to him?” she asks, gesturing towards the sleeping baby on the other side of the hall.

"The church recognises babies as angels. What did she do to Putin that she has to spend five days in this dungeon? And there’s millions like her all over Ukraine. Little innocents.

"This is my question to him but I doubt he will answer.”