His look, fleeing, shows a hint of despair. As for her dark circles, they testify to the agonizing journey of twelve hours that she has just experienced, in the company of her husband and her children aged five and thirteen. Thursday, February 24, in the evening, Lesia has just arrived at the station of Przemyśl, a Polish town located 15 kilometers from the border with Ukraine. “I have never lived in Poland, I came here to protect my family, there were bombings at the airport near my city,” says the 43-year-old woman, keeping an eye on her children.
It was early in the morning, the same day, that Lesia learned the news: Vladimir Poutine gave the order to invade Ukraine, and to pound it.
In disaster, she left her home in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in western Ukraine. “We were apprehensive of an attack, but we didn’t think it would be so terrible, for Russia to even try to attack the west of the country. At dawn, we packed our bags and left by train for Poland,” says the woman who, like several other exiles we met, did not want to give her full name for security reasons.
From Przemyśl, she then intends to reach Krakow, in the south of Poland, where her father lives. “We are exhausted and still in shock, even though we are safe,” she sighs. Like Lesia and her family, of the 50,000 Ukrainians who fled the country following the onslaught of the Russian army, nearly 30,000 have so far chosen Poland as their country of exile.
A little further in the station, sitting on one of the extra beds installed by the authorities to allow the refugees to lie down, Lera Likhitska, 20, also feels like she is living a bad dream. Hot soup in her hands, the young woman with blond hair recounts her ordeal of the last hours. “Early in the morning, my uncle called me to alert me,” she continues. At six o’clock in the morning, barely an hour before the Kremlin master’s martial announcement, his train ticket was booked. “My father, my brother, my grandmother are still there,” she adds, her eyes drowned in tears. “Ukraine is my home, so I feel hatred, not towards Russians, but towards Putin and what’s on his mind. »
As for Valentin, 19, Russian forces had already begun shelling Ukraine when he woke up on Thursday morning. During university holidays, he spent time with his family in Ternopil, in the west of the country. “My mother woke me up urgently, she begged me to leave Ukraine. I took a ticket to come to Poland as soon as possible. On the train, many were crying, and some did not even have a ticket, but were able to stay on board anyway. »
On the station platform the day after the attack, Alina breathes a sigh of relief. With her fiancé, she has just arrived in Poland. Nervous, this 27-year-old computer worker now knows she is safe from the bombings. While being torn at the idea of leaving behind several loved ones, including her sister, who lives in the Donetsk region. “It was a difficult and stressful journey, I had no way of knowing if I was going to manage to reach Poland, or if I was going to die at any moment”, relates the young woman, who wears large round glasses. . “When I woke up at 5 a.m. on Thursday, I heard explosions outside and quickly realized that the time had come to flee as quickly as possible. I took almost nothing with me. No clothes, only a small bag and about twenty hryvnias [0,85 dollar canadien]. My husband had booked my train ticket. We were leading a normal life and suddenly I woke up with war all around me. They kill people, destroy lives, homes. People may never wake up because they bomb during the night. »
Ukraine is my home, so I feel hatred, not towards Russians, but towards Putin and what’s on his mind.
On Friday, on the train that took her to Przemyśl from Kiev, then Lviv, in western Ukraine, Alina said she saw lives shattered by the general mobilization declared the day before by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky . All men between the ages of 18 and 60 are affected by this conscription. “I expected crowded cars, with people sitting on the ground. Men tried to board the train. In my car there were four, five, maybe six. But at the border between Ukraine and Poland, the border guards forced them down, they had to go back to Lviv. There was also a family, they were a father, a mother and a daughter. He could not go to Poland, and the family made the choice not to separate. So they all stayed in Ukraine. I have also seen separated families, for example: the parents only send the children to Poland, or the mother is with her son or daughter and the father stays in Ukraine. »
Those who join the front
Around Alina, the station beats to the rhythm of the arrivals of trains leaving from Kiev, Odessa or Lviv. It also beats to the rhythm of tears, reunions between loved ones. Women, children, elders, families crammed into the hallways, looking annoyed. In front of them, luggage scattered on the floor. Some, for whom the pain is too great, refuse to testify. “I’m too weak to speak,” says a woman, her voice choking with emotion.
There are those who flee the war, but also those who decide to go the opposite way: to return to their country. Clearly, Ukrainian men who, established in Poland for some time for the most part, choose to go to the front. On platform number five, there are several of them, around 8 p.m. Friday evening, getting ready to take the train to Kiev. Viacheslav Kotsiuba, 48, is one of them. He has no military experience. He also says he wants to find his family, who remained in Ukraine. Not very expressive in his words, he cannot contain his tears. “I want to be able to look my son in the eye, returning to Ukraine is necessary for me. »
But faced with this atmosphere of disarray, a surge of solidarity took root in Przemyśl station. In a corridor, soldiers distribute soups, sandwiches, bottles of water and coffee. Further on, in one of the halls, Poles are busy helping the refugees. Like Pawel Jamro, director of a recruitment agency that offers Ukrainian exiles turnkey work when they arrive in Poland. “These people are scared, helpless, they are having a war imposed on them that they do not want. It is our duty to support any population that is the victim of such an attack. »
Lena is carrying heavy luggage on this Friday afternoon. This 40-year-old has just arrived from Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea. She fears the worst for the future of her country: an annexation of Ukraine by Moscow. “If I go back home one day, I am sure that I will have to have a Russian passport. »