During a news conference in Kyiv with relatives of soldiers who died or are still trapped at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, CNN spoke to Nastya Bilousova, 21, whose friend Dmytro Chornyi was killed by a sniper.
Bilousova said she was told via an Instagram message that he had died and didn’t believe it at first. But three days later, she received official confirmation.
Bilousova said she and Chornyi, also 21, have been together for four years and have dreams of going to the country of Georgia.
Although she received the last text message from him on March 1st, she still texts him every day, telling him about her life and that she cannot accept his death.
Nicole, 21, who only gave CNN her first name, attended the meeting with her 5-year-old nephew Kirill on her lap.
She, her nephew and sister spent five days fleeing from Mariupol to Zaporizhia. She said they walked for two days and spent a night in a church to hide from the shelling. They arrived in Zaporizhia on April 6.
Yesterday she was informed that her close friend Olexandr who fought at Azovstal had died. But she refuses to believe it.
“We were very good friends. He was a wonderful, kind man. He loved the guys he fought with. He often told me not to worry that everything would be fine. Now I don’t feel anything,” she said.
She had been getting fewer and fewer messages from him. The last time they wrote a message was on May 8th.
“I believe and hope that’s a mistake that he’s alive,” she said.
On Thursday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said “very difficult negotiations” were underway on the evacuation of seriously wounded fighters from the Azovstal Steel Plant in exchange for Russian prisoners of war.
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