Part Three: The Perilous Road West

Armed with kitchen implements and grit, Ukrainian civilians say they're being shot at on the long journey towards Poland

Women and children carry pairing knives and other shoddy weapons for protection.

LVIV, UA — An arsenal of makeshift weapons lay scattered across the table.

There were hunting knives in leather sheaths and four-inch retractable blades affixed to rubber grips. Some of the weapons weren’t so elegant — a yellow boxcutter, an ice pick, a Swiss Army knife, a can of pepper spray.

These weren’t confiscated from soccer hooligans or a gang of street toughs. The cache of seized weapons belonged to the women and children who fled eastern Ukraine as Russian artillery battered their homes. They came to Lviv on their way to Poland, carrying the barest necessities and a few kitchen knives to defend themselves on the hard journey west.

The table of edged weapons sat at the entrance of a refugee camp in Arena Lviv on Tuesday, as families trickled in after a days-long trip from the front. Most of their fathers, husbands and teenage sons stayed behind to fight the invading army.

Refugees I met with Tuesday described coming under heavy fire from Russian forces as they escaped their homes. This, despite having hand drawn signs with the word “children” taped to their windshield.

“Children” inscribed in the Cyrillic Russian alphabet.

Nelya arrived Tuesday after spending 11 days in the basement of her high rise in Irpin, a city of 60,000 just outside Kyiv. She left with her daughters and grandchildren after Russian artillery killed eight civilians in the area last weekend.

The elderly woman packed seven people into a car — including a two-and-a-half-year-old boy — and took their chances on the road out of town.

“They hit our hospitals, our water supply, our power plant … we had no choice but to leave,” said Nelya. “We felt explosions rumble the ground and heard machine guns being fired at us. The main bridge west was blown up but we found a temporary crossing built by the army.”

Though Nelya’s 68-year-old husband is exempt from military conscription, he stayed to continue fighting for the city. She says that “from time to time” he risks exposing himself to rocket fire by scaling a high rise to get a cellular signal so he can check in on Nelya and the grandkids.

Nelya doesn’t know if she’ll ever see him again.

Nelya.

“There is nothing of tactical importance in our city,” she said. “They are butchering us. They’re firing on buses, firing at children. They are the new fascists, they know exactly what they’re doing.”

As soon as they can get safe passage across the border, they’ll go stay with friends in Poland. It’s been two weeks since Vladimir Putin initiated the biggest ground invasion in Europe since World War II and already 2 million people have left Ukraine.

In neighbouring Poland, where the majority cross over, roughly 100,000 people arrive every day, according to the United Nations. Half are children.

They make a perilous trip on cold buses, trains packed well beyond capacity and following a convoy that keeps off major roads to avoid being targeted by Russian forces. A dozen refugees described chaotic scenes at the train stations near the border with Russia.

“Men were getting into fist fights, women argued, there was a sort of general madness I hope I never see again,” said Andrii, who left Kiev with his wife and child on March 4.

Once in Lviv, they sleep in church basements, on mattresses sprawled out across the second floor of the train station, six-to-a-room at hotels and apartments near downtown. They’re hard to miss; dragging what’s left of their belongings in luggage that bounces along the cobblestone streets or lining up for a cup of soup across from the bus terminal.

Most of the city’s churches offer tea, crackers and a warm place to kneel and pray for God’s mercy.

“This certainly is a test of their faith,” said Father Ivan Galimurka, a priest at the Church of Saints Olga and Elizabeth. “You try to say they’re never alone, that God is always with them. It is difficult to grasp that right now. The Russians are justifying this invasion with their (Orthodox) church but any religion that rationalizes killing is not a church of God.”

Father Ivan Galimurka and Anna, a child refugee.

One elderly man described a 30 hour ride on a bus without heating from the eastern borderlands to Lviv some 1,100 kilometres away. The only time the driver stopped was for people to get off the bus and relieve themselves in a field. Another refugee described driving at night with his headlights off.

As bad as the trip is, staying behind means risking death, capture or — as two women claim to have witnessed — the rape of Ukrainian women by infantrymen.

At the camp inside Arena Lviv, I asked Olga about Putin’s claim that Ukrainians “aren’t a real people” and whether what she’s experienced feels like ethnic cleansing.

“Absolutely, without a doubt. They’re trying to kill us all.”

Like many refugees I spoke to, Nelya said her friends in Russia are convinced Putin’s invasion is the best thing for Ukraine.

Olga and her nephews left Kharkiv Monday and drove 24 hours across the country. The city of 1.4 million people is Ukraine’s second largest and one of the hardest hit. Her husband, who is also exempt from conscription, stayed behind. On the second day of the invasion, two weeks ago, Olga realized her days in the city were numbered.

“Helicopters were shooting at everything,” she said.

Though there are no grocery stores still standing in Kharkiv, a German van filled with food and supplies made it to her husband Monday. But given the city’s proximity to Russia, the supply line may not stay open much longer.

Refugees line up for hours to board a train bound for Poland.

Svetlena, a woman who arrived from the front Monday, said her grandchildren live in Russia with her daughter-in-law. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be allowed to visit with them again.

“My daughter-in-law believes this is a just war,” Svetlana says. “This is tearing families apart. Russian citizens are being fed hate 24 hours a day on the news.”

Olga echoed Svetlana’s sentiment.

“I called my friends in Russia to explain our situation but they offered no support,” Olga said, fighting back tears. “They told me this would be good for us, that we’d be free like the people in occupied Donetsk. They are happy we’re being attacked.”

Just behind Olga, a child played with a xylophone while his mother scrolled on her phone, desperately scanning the news for updates from the eastern front. A woman in her 70s cradled her right arm and winced in pain.

The woman, Helena, says she thinks the bone is broken but that the country’s hospitals don’t have the capacity to treat anyone but the critically wounded. She left a suburb of Kiev Monday and saw houses on fire, a school reduced to rubble and craters where streets used to be.

“Are you in touch with anyone from Russia?” I asked.

Her eyes went white with fear.

“Ni, ni, ni, ni, ni, ni, ni, ni, ni, ni,” she screamed. “I no longer have Russian friends.”

A woman next to Helena handed me a cellphone and played a video she shot while leaving the suburbs of Kiev. On a residential street that housed young families just a few weeks ago, there are only a handful of homes still standing. Plumes of smoke waft over the horizon.

“We don’t know why Europe does not close the sky, if they close the sky the slaughter will end,” Helena said. “We’re doing fine on the ground, we need the bombing to stop.”

Though NATO is on high alert and the United States is working with Poland on a plan to transfer fighter jets to the Ukrainian Air Force, the west will not attempt to impose a no-fly zone over Ukrainian airspace.

“We have been a free country only 30 years but we are still very poor,” Helena said. “Before that I survived (the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown). Everything was getting better until 2014, everything was better before the Russians invaded Crimea.”

A conductor watches as refugees board line up on the platform of Lviv’s train station.

On our way out of Arena Lviv, more refugees poured into the soccer stadium. After Russian-armed militias seized the industrial city of Donestk eight years ago, Arena Lviv became the new home field for FC Shakthar Donestk.

Once the most dominant football club in Ukraine, Shakthar’s matches drew an average of over 36,000 fans per match at the height of their success in 2012. They’ve since been relocated to Kharkiv, Kyiv and Lviv. But in the immediate future, there won’t be any football in any of these cities.

Now football stadiums are one of the only places that can accommodate the masses escaping slaughter in the east.