Thousands of Ukrainians try to escape from the areas invaded by Russia while others resist giving in to the attack
Residents who have not yet fled Kiev have learned to live with the sirens. If it sounds only once, it means that they must be attentive and follow the instructions through the loudspeaker or the official television channels. But if it sounds three times in a row, seek shelter immediately: the bombardment is imminent. Sirens have been blaring in every major city in Ukraine for two days, ever since the Russian invasion began. Now they are heard above all in the neighborhoods of Kiev, where since this Friday its citizens shudder every time they listen to them.
The Russian army has hardly needed a day to reach the heart of Ukraine. The capital has become the epicenter of the fighting. According to some calculations, the war has already caused the exodus of around 40% of its population. Before the first missiles fell, about three million people lived here. Now it looks like a ghost town.
The impact of the drone and the missile that shattered the windows of Yulia Mihkalkova’s house last morning was also announced by the sirens. The Russian plane crashed into the block of flats after being shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses. Yulia lives just two blocks away from the damaged building. She was trying to sleep with her husband when the alarms blared. They barely had time to hide under the bed. A screeching sound preceded a loud explosion. Three people died and several more were injured.
THE PHRASES:
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Anastasia Tarashchuk.
“We do not want to live under the Russian government, which is not democratic” -
Oleksandr Boyko.
“You do not realize that we are the shield of Europe against Putin, who is not going to stop”
This Friday he spent a good part of the morning collecting crystals. Meanwhile, almost all his neighbors, still terrified, packed their bags to leave as soon as possible. For many people in Kiev, what is happening is a “nightmare” that makes them panic. Yulia is 30 years old and works in an architecture studio. It’s a nightmare for her too. But the truth is that she is used to it and doesn’t get so nervous anymore.
This young woman is part of the million and a half people who fled from Dontesk and Lugansk when the fighting in Donbass began in 2014 between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army. She left her home and sought refuge in Kiev. What she could not imagine was that she would be involved in another war. She this time she rules out leaving.
– Haven’t you thought about running away like your neighbors?
– I’m not leaving. My husband is a policeman and he cannot leave. I stay with him.
Anastasia Tarashchuk lives with her parents in the south of the city, not far away. She is only 21 years old and a university student. She at first had a hard time controlling herself when she heard the sirens. The first shell that landed near her house made a deep impression on her. She was asleep and woke up with a start. She thought her imagination was playing tricks on her. The following shocks from her helped him understand that she was real: Putin was bombing Kiev.
The first day of the war was “terrible.” He did not leave the house all day and that in the area where he lives there is not “so much danger” as in other parts of the capital. Little by little, Anastasia has learned to handle all this better and she can control herself when the alarms start. This Friday she went out for a little walk around her neighborhood to “clear her head.” There was hardly anyone on the street. There were also no cars. In the supermarket some shelves were empty.
Anastasia is very young. But she is clear that she will not leave Kiev. “We want to protect our house, our neighborhood, our future. And we are ready to defend ourselves. We do not want to live under the Russian government, which is not democratic », she stresses.
At the other end of town is Victor Chistyak. He lives with his wife and his son in the Obolon district, to the north, precisely where the Russian troops entered. There has been heavy fighting here. He acknowledges that in this war the forces are not balanced and that Ukraine needs foreign “help”. In the early afternoon, the situation was calmer in his neighborhood, while the clashes spread to other areas of the city.
collapsed stations
Part of the population of Kiev has left for second homes or friends’ houses in small towns. They have done so with the conviction that bombings are more unlikely and safer in those municipalities. Victor tried to escape with his family. But it was impossible because the train and bus stations were overwhelmed. They have stayed, but almost all the shops are closed. And he is not able to get rid of the uncertainty caused by the possibility of a new bombing. “We just want to survive.”
Dasha Bogush has also stayed in the capital. This Friday he resisted closing his beauty business. She worked as normally as she could and when she returned to her apartment, where she lives with her three dogs, the television threw the worst news in her face. “I am scared to death. I don’t know what information reaches you in Spain but they are bombing all of Ukraine. I sleep in the hallway, away from the windows. Well, I slept rather little », she is honest. “The shots and the bombs can be heard less than a kilometer from here.”
Refuge. Families shelter from bombs in the basement of schools like this one.
Among those who have managed to escape from the capital, Bogdana Koval. Early Thursday morning, moments after hearing the first bombardments, this 22-year-old chemistry student put her passport and some money in a backpack. Nothing more. “Where do I go with a suitcase in the middle of a war?” she asks. Well, to his family’s house, in the province of Vinnytsya -border with Moldova-. The journey was not easy. “I got in a car with some friends and we were in traffic all day while we heard the bombs.” She resigns herself with her relatives in an area of Ukraine that still seems to be “calm”. “I don’t believe this could be happening.”
Nor does the philologist Oleksandr Boyko come out of his astonishment. On Thursday morning “with a travel bag and only two books” in the trunk of his old Clio, he and his wife Olha left Kiev for Lviv, a large city very close to the Polish border. It seemed like a safe place but during the early hours of this Friday several “very strong” explosions woke them up. Putin’s army had just blown up a military base some nine kilometers away.
“The noise rumbled, as if the bombs had exploded at the door,” he says in a telephone conversation in perfect Spanish. “Despite the fear, the population is not panicking,” he says. “There are kilometric queues of people to donate blood in hospitals,” he says, while launching a forceful message. “We appreciate the help of our allies, but we feel alone and you don’t realize that we are Europe’s shield against Putin, who is not going to stop.”
The people of Kiev are not the only ones trying to get away from the horror of war. In all the towns attacked by Russian troops there are harrowing stories. Olga Yeshenko, a young Ukrainian with strong ties of friendship with the Vitorian Ainara Ochoa, who has led to contact with this newspaper, no longer knows if she wants to leave Sumy, a city located in the northwest of Ukraine. It was one of the first towns bombed on Wednesday. «We all went down to the shelters but when I arrived with my daughter, there was no room. We were only able to return home to the sound of explosions nearby.”
Mother and daughter remained hidden in their apartment this Friday, not knowing very well whether to escape, their initial intention, or to wait. «We tried to take a bus to the interior of the country because we thought that they would not arrive there. We got the ticket, but it never came out. We cannot escape and there is still no room in the shelters », she says anguished. The uncertainty is absolute because “I no longer know if it is safe to leave.” They store food and water for a few days while the heating “comes and goes”. Even when?
An odyssey of traffic jams and fuel shortages to escape
J. BARBÓ
Sirens sounded in Kiev shortly after four in the morning on Thursday. Nadiia Aristova, doctor, researcher specializing in clinical trials woke up her daughters, aged 15 and a year and a half. She dressed them as fast as she could and they went down to the bunker set up in the basement of her building. “We spent the whole night there, very scared,” she says. Yesterday, with Russian troops already on the streets of Kiev, together with her husband Dimitro and her elderly parents, she left the city for Mostysche in the west. “I think we are much safer here,” she says once settled in that small town. From there she attends by WhatsApp.
It has not been easy for them to get there. “There was terrible traffic and gas stations were out of gas,” he recounts. His plans, at first, were to arrive in Poland “but men from 18 to 60 years old cannot leave Ukraine, so I would have to separate from my husband and we prefer to stay together, for now.” “It’s all so illogical, so absurd, that right now I don’t know what to think, I don’t dare even imagine what’s going to happen.”
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