Anguish, fury and grief: One woman recounts rape by Russian soldier

The countdown to the rape began on the day she was wounded in a Russian airstrike, Olena says.

On Day One, a scalding piece of shrapnel embedded itself in her chest after an attack near her home in Hostomel, a suburb of Kyiv.

“I thought I was dying. It was extreme pain,” Olena, 28, said this week. “It was burning like a fire.”

Pointing just under her left breast, Olena said the shrapnel left a slash mark about three-quarters of an inch wide. She showed NBC News the navy hooded sweatshirt she had been wearing, torn in the same place. She said she didn’t remember the exact date but it was roughly mid-March. It still hurts.

The next day, Day Two, she badly needed a bandage changed and, despite that her village was already occupied by the Russian troops, she went out searching for medical help.