On the morning of February 24, my life fell apart. A call at 6 am woke me up, and a friend shouted to me on her phone that the bombing had begun on Kiev. We live in the same house and a quarter of an hour later we found ourselves downstairs and started packing. I managed to get my papers, money, water, some warm clothes to cope with the cold and a laptop. I arranged it so that if I had to run, I could easily put what I had in a bag and move around with a backpack. I wore comfortable and warm clothes. Nobody knew what would happen next.
Violetta Fodorova traveling.
We decided to drive to a dacha 50 kilometers from Kiev, and it took us five hours to get there. There were huge traffic jams to get out of Kiev, which we tried to get around by even passing through the courtyards. At first we hoped to stay in the countryside for a couple of days, until our soldiers stopped all this and we could go home. Nobody expected such a large-scale Russian offensive.
We spent the night at the dacha, but the following morning we realized we had to continue our escape. We discovered that there was a military airport nearby where fierce fighting was taking place. There was the sound of explosions. They were scary. After a brief confrontation, we decided to move to the western border of Ukraine, where our relatives live. It was the longest and most difficult journey of my life: 30 hours straight without sleeping and without stopping, headed for what we hoped was a safe place.
Traveling to the border.
At first we tried to get around the huge traffic jams by going through the villages, but we found ourselves having to pull out a car stuck in the mud and we almost ended up in the place where the rocket firing at the airfield happened, so we returned to the main road and entered a column of cars that stretched for miles. We prayed for only one thing: that that column of cars would not become a living target for the invaders. Early in the morning we arrived at Lviv, where we were able to refuel to continue the journey. We only reached our destination in the evening, exhausted, but happy because at least they weren’t shooting there.
Now I am a few kilometers from the border with Slovakia: Ukrainians arrive here every day from all regions of the country and the locals go out of their way to help refugees. People offer their homes to those in need of shelter, help set up refugee centers, prepare meals, search for baby food, which is in short supply, and help the thousands of refugees stranded at the border trying to enter the European Union .
Source: Vanity Fair
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