A 13-year-old Ukrainian girl whose whole family was killed when the car they were travelling in was shot at by Russian troops is now recovering from her near-fatal bullet wounds.
Sophia Kudrin’s parents and sister Polina were among the first victims brutally murdered as they attempted to flee Ukraine in the early days of Russia’s invasion.
Sophia’s sister, pink-haired, Harry Potter-mad Polina, was in her final year of primary school when she was killed.
An image of the girl was shared by deputy mayor of Kyiv, Vladimir Bondarenko, and became a symbol for the real human cost of the war.
He said: "Her name was Polina. She studied in the 4th grade of school in Kyiv. Her and her parents were shot by Russian DRG."
Sophia’s seven-year-old brother, Semyon, died in Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital after fighting for his life for three days after the ambush.
Sophia was left unconscious in hospital with a bullet lodged in her spine, with no idea that her whole family had been murdered.
But a little more than three weeks on, Sophia is now receiving treatment at a paediatric hospital in Rome, having been evacuated from Ukraine by Alla Melnychuk’s charity Mother and Child.
Sophia’s grandmother Svetlana, who is grieving the loss of her son and family, told ITV that she and her athletic, artistic granddaughter “dreamed about the moment when [they] can go back home”.
The girl has improved in leaps and bounds since her arrival in Rome, having gone from only communicating with her eyes, to regaining movement in her legs.
Sophia hadn’t been formally told what happened to her and her family, with the focus currently being on her recovery, but Svetlana believed the teenager sensed it.
“She understands everything, I think, but it is a forbidden topic for now - we don’t touch it,” she said.
News of Sophia's recovery comes as a senior US official has warned that Russian president Vladimir Putin is not ready to make compromises to end his invasion of Ukraine.
The official told Reuters that Putin would not be willing to make concessions at this point despite the first face-to-face negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in more than two weeks being set to resume.
Russia has suffered significant losses during the invasion, with Ukraine claiming that 16,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, as well as substantial losses of military hardware such as tanks, aircraft, and ships.
But despite the war not appearing to go the way that Putin had planned, the Russian president does not appear ready to compromise to broker a peace agreement.
The senior US State Department official told Reuters on condition of anonymity: "Everything I have seen is he is not willing to compromise at this point."
The ominous prediction comes after Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky had sketched out a potential way to bring the invasion to a close.
Kyiv has now said that it will no longer consider any concessions on territory as the fighting on the ground appears to be shifting in its favour.
Nonetheless the situation for Ukrainian citizens remains desperate, with Russia blocking civilian evacuation from the besieged city of Mariupol despite Ukrainian reports that 90% of the city has been damaged by the relentless bombardment.
