Ukrainians cross front line for home
ZAPORIZHZHIA, UKRAINE >> A tiny, Soviet-made car is bed tonight for the older couple waiting to risk their lives by crossing the war's front line in Ukraine. But they're not fleeing — they're going back in.
“Everything is there. Our roots are there,” says the man, 75. “Even people from Mariupol want to go back.”
They don't want to share their names out of fears for their safety as they attempt to make the long drive back to the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, the scene of some of the war's fiercest fighting.
The world is now accustomed to images of millions of Ukrainians on the run from Russia's invasion. In their shadow are people with a different kind of desperation and daring, heading the other way.
For some the pull is to reach loved ones, often vulnerable due to illness or infirmity, who were left behind. For others it's a journey of nostalgia and defiance.
The couple want to go back to their home in Donetsk to take a look at least. They're old. They're homesick. It's time to take chances. “Where else should we go?” the man says.
He leans against the boxy yellow Lada, resting his weight on the 40-yearold car and on two canes.
His belongings are whatever his wife stuffed into the trunk before they fled.
“She forgot to bring her lover,” the man says, with mischief in his eyes. His wife of 53 years laughs, then comes close to tears as reality returns.
“You can go mad if you don't make jokes,” she says.
Recent weeks have seen many Ukrainians who fled the country return home, but in many cases that's because Russian forces withdrew from the area around the capital, Kyiv, regrouping for an offensive in the east. It's not known how many people have crossed the front lines to return to contested areas and occupied cities.
Here in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia is a parking lot where volunteers have helped thousands of people fleeing in battered vehicles. Some have shattered
windows. Others are missing doors. Many have signs saying “children” taped to their windshields.
On the edges of this are people headed in the other direction.
One is Igor Filko, who stands alone on the sidewalk, smoking. The 30-year-old was released Wednesday after three years in prison, emerging into a world he hardly recognized.
“Everything is different,” he says. “Everything is wrong.”
He is trying to make his way to the seaside city of Berdyansk and his wife, small child and mother. He sleeps at the train station. He has no phone, borrowing one from a volunteer at the reception center to call his family. He has no car, little money and a growing sense of just how dangerous it is to go home.