As artillery blasted overhead, the students, ages 11 to 19, and their instructor crowded inside the truck.
Two direct strikes had been delivered to their school in war-torn Kamenskoye.
The first blasted a hole in a dormitory wall, while the second collided with an office.
The majority of their classmates had evacuated on the first day of Putin’s assault, but five of them had nowhere to go because their parents reside in seized territory.
They are unable to hear the explosions, but they can feel them when the basements in which they are hiding tremble.
“We can’t hear what is going on, so we only feel it. The house shaking, the windows shaking, everything shaking,” said Vladislav Bilokin, 19.
“Every night and most of the day we sat in the basement. That is where we have been living.”
Vlad and his 12-year-old friend Irvin Yushfov are from a village near Crimea that Russia seized on the first day of the conflict.
Shelling has increased in the last 24 hours, they added, and Ukrainian forces were fearful of an attack.
“There are no words to describe what war is like,” said Vladislav Zhmenovatsky, 15.
The Russians blitzed his positions, according to the local battalion commander, with missiles, rockets, and shells fired from tanks and self-propelled guns.
“The Russian lines are three miles away. They are attacking us on two front and trying to outflank us,” he said.
The children were driven 30 miles north to Zaporizhia by The Sun and a crew from The Daily Telegraph.
They were greeted by employees from another deaf institution, which informed them that they would be sent west.
Vladislav Bilokin added: “Now I feel fine, but earlier it was very scary.
“It wasn’t safe to stay — the Russians are coming.”
Reference: The Sun, Sun Hero Daring Sun man saves five deaf Ukraine students after Russia bombs their school, Jerome Starkey, 8:09, 8 Mar 2022, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17875908/five-deaf-students-saved-ukraine/
