Stuart Ramsay has described the injuries he suffered after being shot in Ukraine – with a former military surgeon telling him he was “the most lucky person I’ve met”.
Ramsay, camera operator Richie Mockler, producers Martin Vowles and Dominique Van Heerden and local producer Andrii Lytvynenko were ambushed on 28 February on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Now back in the UK – Stuart, Dominique and Richie joined Sarah-Jane Mee on the Sky News Daily to talk for the first time together about what happened and how they managed to escape with their lives.
“It’s nothing short of miraculous that five people got out of the car,” Ramsay told Sarah-Jane Mee.
“If somebody said, ‘you five are going to sit in that car and we’re going to shoot at you for three minutes and 20 seconds.’ What do you think your chances of getting out would be? And you’re going to say none.”
Like other foreign journalists – they were trying to gather pictures and first-hand accounts of what had been happening since the Russian invasion.
But they came under fire from what they believe was a saboteur Russian gang – and as the bullets hit their car they had to escape down an embankment to a remote warehouse.
Mockler was hit twice with his body armour taking both bullets.
But Ramsay was hit by a shot below the body armour.
“People think body armour covers everything. It actually just covers the front and back of your chest – your vital organs,” he said.
“As I was leaving the car I was shot. You can describe it as slightly to the right of my bottom, if you like at the top of my leg and then out… just before the kidneys.
“The surgeon said ‘you are just like the most lucky person I’ve met’ – and he was a military surgeon.
“He said it only had to touch a bit of bone and I would have died because it’s going in some weird direction, probably upwards.”
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