One Ukrainian refugee's story

There are (literally) a million stories now.  Here is one of them -

I’m a Python programmer and I work for a German company, and they helped me leave Ukraine for Poland. We left Kyiv in a small Peugeot 307 car. There were nine of us, me, my mum, my sister, our two husbands, four children and two big dogs, including an elderly German shepherd. It was impossible to move inside the car. We drove for 16 hours to a village about 140km from Kyiv...

Near the border with Poland there were a lot of cars and we couldn’t stay in the car for the next three – or five – days, so we decided to walk the last 17km to the border. We left at 4am – it was minus seven degrees... 

My dog is 12 and a half and she struggled to walk and fell down every kilometre or so and couldn’t stand up again. I stopped cars and asked for help but everyone refused; they advised us to leave the dogs. But our dogs are part of our family. My dog has experienced all the happy and sad moments with us. Mum’s dog is all she has left of her former life. So my husband, at times, carried our dog on his shoulders...

My husband couldn’t cross the border because of his age and the mobilisation order. He has gone back to the village to look after his mother and grandmother... All of them are in one little house without water. There’s no shop, no pharmacy, no water or food in the village and he and my sister’s husband are using firewood to heat the house.

My plan is just, I don’t know...

Her story continues at The Guardian.  Image (credit Alisa/Guardian community) cropped for size from the original at the source.