The train, bound for Kiev, was due to leave Mariupol station at five in the afternoon on Friday, February 25. Something delayed it to seven. Then they told the passengers, who were already in their seats, that they wouldn’t start until seven in the morning. At the station, inside the cars, nearby explosions were heard and aircraft and helicopter noise. These were signs that the Russian troops were already very close to this city of half a million inhabitants located in the Donbas region. Mariupol, a port enclave with a large metallurgical industry, is the most important city in the region after Donetsk, formerly the capital, remains in the hands of Russian separatists.
At half past seven in the morning, travelers are informed that the tracks are unusable and that travel by train is impossible. The approximately 300 passengers are grouped into four buses, which, at nine in the morning, leave for an intermediate station, from where they can board another train to Kiev. According to some of them, they are probably the last buses to leave before the final Russian assault. Some of the travellers, like a mother traveling with her three young daughters, all under the age of 10, hope to be able to jump from Kiev, which is also becoming increasingly worrying, to Poland and reach the city of Krakow, where they have relatives. They travel very worried, because they left everything in the northern part of Mariupol and because they go without money and without PCR. They don’t know if they will let them cross the border. They decided to flee with what they were wearing for fear of the bombs and projectiles that they could not stop hearing from their house.
Inform George Said from Zaporizhya (Ukraine)
Photo: Some girls escaped on Saturday on the train from Mariupol to Kiev.
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