Refugee vows: I’m going home tofightPutin’s insane friends
ONE Ukrainian refugee who spent 30 hours desperately trying to enter Poland has vowed to return to Kyiv and defend her homeland.
Liz, a 37-year-old private tutor, told The Mail on Sunday yesterday how she could even take up arms to fight back against the Russian invaders. ‘I am ready to do it,’ she said in flawless English at a Polish reception centre just two miles from war-torn Ukraine.
‘I realised that we have to fight to protect our country, and maybe even the whole world, from Putin and his insane friends.’
Russia’s bombardment of the Ukrainian capital and other cities across the country enters its 12th day today, sparking accusations of war crimes against Moscow.
‘I don’t want to be bombed or cut into pieces, but I want to protect my city at the same time,’ said Liz.
She watched helplessly with her 36-year-old sister Tonia from the window of her sibling’s apartment as the first attacks on Kyiv began on February 24.
Just 48 hours earlier, the pair had been celebrating the news that Tonia was in remission from breast cancer. The sisters fled for Poland with Tonia’s nine-year-old son Klim the same evening after the first Russian strikes on the capital.
‘We got to the border around eight o’clock on Thursday [February 24]. There was a huge queue stretching back about nine kilometres,’ added Liz.
‘The whole of Friday we were waiting, and it was only Saturday morning when we crossed over.’
Tonia moved to the western Polish city of Poznan, while Liz is staying in Korczowa, a Polish village on the main road back into Ukraine. It is unclear how she will travel back to Kyiv as the fighting makes it ever more difficult to move safely around the country. ‘I believe that those who want to do something will find a way, and those who do not will find an obstacle,’ she said.
Since the war broke out, Poland has been welcoming thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the bloodshed.
More than 1.3 million have already left to go abroad, according to the UN, in what has been described as Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. At the main railway station in the Polish border town of Przemysl, Nadia Terletska, a 46-year-old medical college lecturer from Lviv, waits to return to her hometown.
The Mail on Sunday also saw groups of Ukrainian men waiting to board trains, presumably with plans to sign up with the military and fight back against Russia.
Miss Terletska shuttles backwards and forwards over the border every few days, helping the women and children who are trying to escape Ukraine.
‘If the Russians come to my town, it will be a one-way trip,’ she said as she waited outside passport control. ‘We will fight them with our bare hands if we have to.’
Thousands of people converged on Central London’s Trafalgar Square yesterday to protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They heard speeches by members of London’s Ukrainian community while one group stood with a banner reading: ‘When the last Ukrainian soldier falls, Putin will come for YOU, ladies & gentlemen.’
Chants of ‘slava Ukraina, ‘arm Ukraine’ and ‘air defence for Ukraine’ rang out during the event organised by the activist group London Maidan.
Journalist Edward Lucas told the crowd that he wanted to apologise to the people of Ukraine for the West not listening to fears of Putin’s aggression.
‘The West didn’t listen but now we have to say thank you for opening our eyes. The most important thing is that we stop Putin,’ he said.
Another protest yesterday outside the Russian embassy in Kensington caused the nearby exclusive road of Kensington Palace Gardens, where Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich owns a property valued at more than £150 million, to be closed over security fears.
‘If they come to my town, it will be a one-way trip’