While she lay there seriously hurt, she recalls him saying, “I’m sorry for doing this but we have an order to shoot everything that is moving, and you cannot imagine how many cars like this we have full of Nazis who are trying to bomb us,” Tetyana, 42, told NBC News on Wednesday from her bed in Kyiv City Hospital 17.
Her husband, Roman, 50, and their daughter, Katherina, 16, were also hit in their legs.
The officer’s comments echoed President Vladimir Putin’s accusations of Nazi elements within Ukraine, his stated reason for invading Russia’s western neighbor. Experts have slammed the allegations as slanderous and false.
Tetyana, a former shop worker, said the Russian soldiers she encountered “truly believe that everyone around is a Nazi.” She added that the soldiers “were all terrified,” and she had spoken calmly with them prior to the shooting.
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