Family shares how it fled Ukraine

More than 3.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24.

Olesya Rodina, a journalist who lived with her husband in Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine, said she and her husband had lived in south east of Ukraine for three years before they were forced to flee their home.

“On February 24 we were woken up by trembling from loud rockets which blasted into our district. We stayed on the 9th floor of our apartment building and could feel the building shaking from the impact of the blast. Everyone ran downstairs to the basement for safety,” said Rodina.

She added that the blasts continued for days, and the lifts in the building were shut down which was an inconvenience to the elderly neighbours who made use of wheel chairs.

Rodina explained that she and husband struggled to sleep for weeks due to planes hovering over the town and distant blast waves and were too afraid to go out and search for food.

“My husband and I left Kyiv and tried to find a taxi but all roads were blocked and we could not move around between 6pm and 7am because of the curfew. People were very scared to move around in cars because Russians were bombing moving cars. We were lucky enough to find a train travelling to the east of Ukraine and arrived in Dnipro on 8 March,” said Rodina.

Rodina said she had been battling with post traumatic stress and was frightened by every loud sound she heard because of the blasts.

She added that since the Russian invasion, she and her family from Russia had had conflict due to the negative propaganda which they had been brainwashed with.

“We have been sending my family videos of the bombing but they claim that they are fake and have become ignorant towards the war. Our family relations have been torn apart but we hope that after all this, they will be restored,” said Rodina.

She highlighted that all Ukraine citizens were together at this stage and would continue to fight to keep what’s left of their cities safe.