Long lines in front of ATMs, gas stations and food stores. This is how Kiev woke up this Thursday morning after Russia’s attack on the province of Donbas and the main cities of Ukraine. That is the first thing Álex Ricalday, a Mexican from Tamaulipas who has been living in the country’s capital for two years, has seen. “People are starting to panic,” the 36-year-old man tells EL PAÍS in an interview. It is 8:53 a.m. on a cold and rainy morning in Kiev, and Ricalday picks up the phone minutes after making the decision to leave Ukraine. “We want to get out as soon as possible,” he says.
“For a few days we have been trying to leave Kiev, my wife is six months pregnant and we wanted to stay as long as we could because it is a risky pregnancy,” he says. Many people are trying to leave the largest city in the country, with almost three million inhabitants, as soon as possible. “There are no train tickets, we can’t find any airline flights,” says Ricalday, who had booked a rental car just a few days ago and hopes to be able to pick it up at the airport so he can get closer to Lviv, in the west of the country, by land. and then seek to cross the border into Poland. “We thought we had more time,” he laments.
As if it were an earthquake or other emergency situation, Ricalday and his wife Katerina packed a suitcase with the essentials: their marriage certificate, their passport, the most important papers, cash and their laptops. The Ukrainian authorities have just decreed martial law, but the information flows slowly. After the Russian attack he called his family in Matamoros, he told them that he was fine and hopes to meet another Mexican friend so they can go out together. “There is a lot of movement, there is always traffic in Kiev, but today is a different day,” he says. Hours after that call, Ricalday says that he has been able to leave the city and that he is on his way to Lviv.
Ivette Rossano, a 41-year-old from Chihuahua, returned from Lviv to Kiev less than 24 hours ago, just to hear the bombs whistling over the capital. “The noise woke us up, we didn’t know what was happening,” says Rossano, who lives in the center of the city with her husband and her nine-year-old stepson, who does not have papers to leave the country. Her family has decided to stay and wait until receiving instructions from the Government and the Mexican Embassy: “They have asked us to stay home and to be calm, that Ukraine is prepared for whatever comes.”
Meanwhile the ambulance and police sirens have not stopped sounding. During the afternoon the anti-aircraft alarms have begun to sound in Kiev. Through social networks, the population has been instructed to move to shelters and bunkers. Rossano has taken shelter with his family in the nearest metro station to his house, although hours after the alert he has been able to return to his apartment. “For me this is something completely new. I am Mexican and although we have some conflicts with the cartels, I would be lying if I said that I am not afraid”, says the graduate in International Trade. From her window, she can see several neighbors walking down the street with their suitcases and crowding the stores to stock up. Her refrigerator is empty and she hopes to be out in a few hours to buy groceries.
A few hours earlier, Rosalía Tovar, a 34-year-old Spanish teacher, was listening to the roar of the planes. It was five in the morning. Minutes earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an attack on Ukraine. “One after another, after another, they flew by, they have been terrible moments,” says Tovar, from a hotel in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, on the western fringe of the country, where she and other compatriots have been transferred by the Embassy of Mexico . She had been up all night, but when she found out about the invasion, she didn’t get off the phone. “Wake up, wake up! It’s war, they’re going there, they’re attacking us! ”, She recounts with a broken voice.
The first hours of the latest war in Europe have been full of uncertainty. The atmosphere had been charged with nervousness, says Tovar, especially given the warnings that had come from the White House about an invasion and a premonition that the conflict was escalating. Early on Thursday, the Kremlin’s threats came to fruition. “All my friends in Kiev are scared to death, many have driven their cars out of the capital,” he says, “they tell me they hear the shelling and see their windows shaking.”
Tovar, a native of the state of Guanajuato, had been living in Ukraine for nine years, where she had landed to flee violence and live more peacefully. In Kiev she had built a life until Russia declared war and she made the decision a few days ago to leave the capital along with thirty other Mexicans. “I left everything there: my little house, my friends, because I wanted to be safe, so I came with the Embassy to a hotel,” she says.
The Government of Mexico selected Ivano-Frankivsk, some 600 kilometers west of Kiev, as a strategic point to evacuate the compatriots to Hungary, Slovakia, Poland or Romania. As late as this Wednesday night, Tovar and other Mexicans had plans to return to the capital to pick up what they had left behind. “An attack is the last thing we expected, we did nothing to deserve this,” says the young woman, at a time when everything is uncertain and the plans she had made are falling apart.
Unlike other countries, Mexico has decided to maintain its diplomatic representation in the capital of Ukraine and the Foreign Ministry is still testing the most feasible possibility of evacuating the country’s citizens. So far the embassy has located 225 Mexicans, of which 50 have requested assistance to leave the country. “In communication with our embassy in Kiev. They are fine and report monitoring activated for the protection of Mexican families, ”said the head of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard, from his Twitter account. “Our ambassador reports: they are fine, in contact with the Mexican families. A state of emergency has been declared. In Kiev there was a bombing of government facilities without affecting our community,” Ebrard wrote almost eight hours later. “We are not in favor of any war,” said the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, at a press conference.
Amid so much confusion, Rossano tells what he sees through the window of one of his balconies. Across the street an older woman comes out of a gift shop with balloons and a cake: in the early hours of the war there is still time to celebrate her birthday. From the other window, her neighbors leave in a hurry and loaded with luggage and the lines to get cash and food are getting longer. Rossano resists. “We try to lead a normal life, within what is possible.”
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