TRAUMA OF FLEEING CHILDREN
UKRAINIAN children voiced relief after escaping the relentless wail of air raid sirens and crossing into Moldova.
Marianna Rossel, nine, spent much of the last month running to and from the nearest shelter in the heavily bombarded port city of Mykolaiv.
Sometimes she cried so hard she struggled to breathe and imagined hearing the alarms even when they were silent.
She said: “We saw very young children with their mothers, crying. It was horrible.”
Mum Olga, 41, said: “In the first week of the war my daughter slept in the bath because it’s safer. I slept on the floor.
Hell
“Yesterday she said, ‘Mama, why do I have such a horrible childhood? Why do I have to stay in this war?’”
The pair wanted to wait out the conflict as they were terrified the bus to the border would be hit.
But Olga decided they had to take the risk as the attacks intensified.
As beaming Marianna danced around the refugee checkpoint in Palanca, hugging volunteers who gave her food, Olga added: “I’m very happy to see her smile today. I don’t remember the last time she was like this.”
Uliana Kovali, 10, was also relieved to have escaped the haunting howl of alarms in Odesa.
The determined youngster insisted she was not afraid to leave her country.
She said: “I always have a positive spirit. I’m ready to continue the journey away from this hell, where the sirens never stop and there are constant sounds of shooting.”
Uliana and her mother Katerina, 42, planned to travel to Germany where volunteers had offered them shelter. The pair had been interested in coming to the UK so that Uliana could continue learning English but it was too expensive to buy a plane ticket.
Katerina added: “We had a normal life and now suddenly we have been deprived of everything.”
Anna Sarketova, 36, was moving against the flow of refugees, returning to Odesa with her two young children and parents a fortnight after they initially fled.
She said: “Our friends have told us that in Odesa it is more or less calm so we decided to come back to collect some more clothes.”
Born in Rostov, Russia, she has relatives there who have urged her to surrender. She said: “They call us and ask us why our men join the territorial defence. They say we have to lay down our weapons and wait.
“It’s like two different worlds. They think we believe propaganda and our government deceives us and we believe their government deceives them.”