12-year-old Ukrainian amputee conquers Boston marathon
Twelve-year-old Yana Stepanenko, who lost both her legs in a Russian missile attack on the Kramatorsk train station, ran her first Boston Marathon, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi reported on Telegram on April 14.
"Nothing is impossible,” Sadovi wrote. “Unbreakable Yana Stepanenko ran her first Boston Marathon. These 5 kilometers once again proved that one should never give up."
Yana prepared intensely for the marathon, training at the UNBROKEN center and on the bike track four times a week. Her participation was not only a personal challenge but also a fundraising effort to procure a sports prosthesis for Oleksandr Ryasnyi, a severely injured Ukrainian defender.
The Boston Marathon, one of the world’s oldest and most renowned marathons, is held annually and draws competitors and spectators from around the globe.
On April 8, 2022, fifty-nine people, including seven children, were killed, and 109 others were wounded in a Russian deadly attack on the Kramatorsk railway station with two guided ballistic missiles. A few days prior, the enemy had targeted the railroad infrastructure, blocking several evacuation trains. As a result, several thousand people were waiting at the station for evacuation at the time of the attack.
Read also: Documenting Russia's deadliest strikes against Ukrainian civilians
Yana and her mother were among the victims of the Russian terrorist attack. The girl lost both legs, while her mother lost one lower limb. They both underwent several months of treatment in Ukraine before traveling to the United States for rehabilitation and prosthetic fittings. On Aug. 29, 2023, they returned to Ukraine after a year of rehabilitation and prosthetics in San Diego.
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
