Gorka Barrigón, from San Sebastian, and his son David, a four-year-old Ukrainian, arrived yesterday in San Sebastián fleeing from the war
Last Wednesday, Gorka Barrigón lived a peaceful life in Kiev, where this man from San Sebastian has lived for five years. “People went to the cinema or the theater, went out to dinner or to a disco… Normality was total,” he recounted yesterday as soon as he arrived in Donostia fleeing from a war that “no one could guess on the eve of its start.” That day, he went out for a walk through the Plaza de la Independencia (Maidan), and ran into a friend with whom he had dinner on Friday. As happens to any parent in a similar situation, his concern became where to leave his son, David Ratov, four years old, that night, who also did not know that at seven in the afternoon he was going to leave school and never return. The child’s mother, Olena Ratova, had to go on a work trip to the Carpathians, so they decided to leave the child with her parents. Everyone happy with the plan. But all logistics were blown up the next morning, with the start of Russia’s bombing of the Ukrainian capital. “For the first time we heard the sirens warning of an attack,” he recounts. Then came the bombs and the unrest. “Then we were aware that this was serious.”
Since then, the life of Gorka Barrigón is a constant improvisation. Her idea is to leave her son with her parents, Miguel Ángel and Mª Ángeles, and return to the Polish city of Krakow, where Olena has moved, with the intention of “helping” the thousands of women and children who have arrived from Ukraine. “Men between 18 and 60 years old cannot leave the country, although they have not been forced to fight either,” explains the man from San Sebastian. «I have my life set up in Kiev, but at the moment it does not occur to me to return. My mother would give a bad, “he adds.
Despite the apparent daily life that the Ukrainian population lived until the start of the war, Gorka Barrigón points out that “the population followed the news and you did see more people than usual in supermarkets or in banks”, where only he could take out “a maximum of 2,000 hryvnias (about 60 euros)”, but “in general, everyone thought that how Putin would dare to start a war. It was understood that he was trying to tense the situation to get agreements, but not a war ».
On Wednesday, Gorka was thinking about dinner on Friday and David was going to class; a day later bombs rained down on Kiev
The next day, in the midst of war chaos, citizens were already making “endless queues” at supermarkets to get food. Barrigón understood that “staying in Kiev was the worst option” and went to the Spanish embassy. “They offered me to go back in the convoy that would leave that same day (with about 50 people), but I told them I couldn’t so soon.” Before that he had to decide together with Olena what to do with David. “He told me to get him to safety and take him with me on the next convoy,” which would be the last. “I told a friend, but he preferred to wait one more day, and he has not been able to leave the country anymore,” he lamented. That Thursday, thousands of Ukrainians followed the advice to spend the night in the subway stations, built “many meters deep” and designed to withstand an air attack that seemed unlikely.
“Everything happened to us on the trip”
Gorka chose to sleep next to David in his house. It was not easy to fall asleep. “I felt a huge vibration from a plane that hit a building and the rumble of another that flew very close.” At dawn, she put the most basic things in a 10-kilo suitcase and joined the other convoy, with the television personality Pelayo Gayol in command of the GEO that escorted a bus, a van and several cars with red and white flags. Among the hundred evacuees, were the ambassador and the consul. The man from San Sebastian underlines “the great professionalism” of the GEO to solve all unforeseen events during the 750 kilometers between Kiev and Krakow, where they did not arrive until Sunday. Advancing the first 25 took them “about five hours” before the caravans of people who wanted to leave Kiev.
During the journey, “everything happened to us,” he emphasizes. From a road exit of one of the vehicles with diplomats, which he was able to restart, the puncture of another and, the most complicated thing to manage, one of those military checkpoints that most of us have only seen in movies. Gorka did not find out until later that the driver of the van then demanded “more money” from them to continue the trip and that a GEO felt the barrel of a gun on his face. In the end, they relocated the passengers from the van to the bus, and continued on.
The man from San Sebastian has put his son with his grandparents safe, and plans to go to Krakow to help the thousands of Ukrainians who have fled
With just over 100 kilometers to go to the border, the Ukrainian police joined in to protect the convoy. “We had to negotiate to be able to skip the 32 kilometers of queues” of vehicles and people trying to flee barbarism. With the thermometer hovering around zero degrees, “people were freezing to death. You saw many children, ”observes Barrigón.
Yesterday morning, around 2:40, a plane took them to Madrid, where they were received by government representatives. During the trip, Potbelly had lost his mobile phone, so he addressed the journalists who were waiting for the returnees. “I wanted to do an interview so my family and friends would know we were okay.” Yesterday he was able to be with several relatives and today he intends «to see how I can go from Donostia to Krakow. One day I will have to go back to Kiev, because I left the house as if I were going to buy bread. I left everything.”
The problem is “that nobody knows what is going to happen”. The war has aroused patriotic sentiment and Volodymyr Zelensky, the comedian who now presides over the former Soviet republic, “has gained enormous popularity, when before he had no charisma.” The price for this is paid by the civilian population.
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