Refugees flee safe havens in west Ukraine as Russian offensive widens

Medyka, Poland — “We didn’t want to cross the border at all, we wanted to stay in Ukraine,” 59-year-old Tatyana Chumak, originally from Kharkiv, told TRT World shortly after crossing the border the day after Russian warplanes fired around thirty cruise missiles at a Ukrainian military base west of the city of Lviv, a cultural hub. Since the Russian offensive began on February 24, it was seen as a safe haven for displaced Ukrainians. 

It was Russia's westernmost attack since the offensive began on the doorsteps of a NATO country, sparking fears of a further escalation. Before February, the base was used by NATO forces to train Ukrainians. 

Tatyana is one of the many Ukrainians who had sought refuge in the west of the country. She and her family settled in Vereshchytsya, in Ukraine’s southwestern Carpathian region near the border with Poland. The town is a mere 20-minute drive from the Yavoriv International Peacekeeping and Security Centre targeted by Russia on Sunday.

The UN has been able to confirm more than 636 civilians have lost their lives, including 46 children, while warning that the actual figure is likely to be considerably higher. The Ukrainian authorities say more than 2,000 civilians have been killed in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol alone, where water and food supplies are running low.

“Yesterday in the morning thirty rockets were fired at our village from all sides,” Tatyana told TRT World. “One was shot down in the air, but it did not explode. It fell on our garden, about 100 metres from our house,” she recounts. “We didn’t have a basement, so we stayed in the house and prayed.”

“The windows were blown out by the shockwave of the explosion. We were heavily bombed from five in the morning for 40 minutes,” she says. The explosions, she adds, were far more terrifying than anything the family had witnessed before. 

“My sister’s child was so scared and shaking far more than in Brovary,” she says referring to the neighbourhood on the outskirts of Kiev where part of her family used to live, which has been the scene of intense fighting.

“After that, we realised we had to move on.” 

Her neighbours, Tatyana says, also left straight after the shelling. Crossing the border also meant her family was separated as her husband, who drove them to the crossing, had to stay behind.

While Russia has so far targeted military positions in Western Ukraine, local residents fear that soon the bombing could intensify and that just like in the eastern and central parts of the country, civilian areas could come under fire.

The multiple missile strikes on Sunday night — which came a day after Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said arms shipments to Ukraine from NATO countries would be treated as “legitimate targets” — left craters up to ten metres-deep, according to eye witness reports. A day after the incident, rescuers were still searching for survivors under the rubble. The air raids killed at least 35 and injured 134, according to the Ukrainian authorities. 

Russia said more than 180 “foreign mercenaries” had been killed at the military facility, which the Russian interior ministry said was used to store weapon shipments from the West and train members of the foreign legion. The attack followed the bombing of military facilities in Western Ukraine, near the cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, earlier in the week. Another air strike on a TV tower in Antopol, 160 kilometres from the Polish border, killed 19 and injured nine on Monday.

Fears of conflict spilling into Poland

When loud explosions woke Olena* in the early hours of Sunday, she knew the time had come to pack her bags, cramming as much of her family’s belongings into them as she could. 

Now, having crossed the border into Poland, she dragged hurriedly-filled plastic bags and suitcases as the line advanced to catch a bus headed to the train station in the southeastern town of Przemysl. The town of 60,000 has become a hub for Ukrainian refugees looking to get on trains or buses to other parts of the country, or elsewhere in Europe. 

Olena, who is in her late forties and travelling with her children and husband – one of the few women to do so as Ukrainian men from 18 to 60 years old are barred from leaving the country, with a few exceptions – lived in Mostyska, a border town in western Ukraine, 20 kilometres from Yavoriv. 

“We decided to leave in the morning because of the air strike. It was so loud. Everyone suddenly woke up,” says Olena. Until then, she says, she had hoped western Ukraine would be spared from Russian bombs, and that she wouldn’t have to leave like many of her countrymen in frontline cities like Kharkiv, Kiev and Dnipro.

“We took a sudden decision, only because of the children,” she says, unable to hold back tears. Her neighbours and friends were also preparing to leave. “They will be leaving from today - many of them,” she says before hopping on a bus with her family.

Humanitarian groups expect more people will make their way to the Polish and other borders from western areas, particularly from the city of Lviv, where many have sought refuge after being displaced from other areas of the country. 

The Medyka border crossing is visibly less crowded these days than it was a week ago, but refugees keep streaming steadily through the exit gate, dragging their bags, children and pets, exhausted after a journey that often lasts for days. They are greeted by volunteers from all over the world offering chocolate and drinks, as well as providing information.

“We are expecting more refugees from Ukraine and also from western Ukraine,” Chris Melzer, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) told TRT World. 

“The numbers are not as high any more as they were in the first week. Now it is 70,000 to 80,000 per day, it was 140,000 about a week ago,” Melzer adds. 

According to UNHCR, nearly three million people have now fled Ukraine into neighbouring countries, including 1.8 million who fled to Poland.

“The refugees of the first two weeks very often had family ties or friends in Poland,” Melzer says. “Many of those arriving now do not have any connection to Poland, and accommodation could be a major problem in the next weeks,” he adds. 

On the Ukrainian side of the border, 66-year-old Emiliya was resting by a fence as her daughter held their spot in the queue for passport control. She had been waiting for five hours as more than 200 people huddled to get through. Emiliya and her daughter are headed to Paris, where her son lives.

“I didn’t want to leave home, it’s hard for me to walk,” Emiliya says in a whisper, “but my son insisted that my daughter and I leave Ukraine.” The pair are from Dolyna, a town near Ivano-Frankivsk. At least half a dozen others queuing to enter Poland were from the same area, where Russian missiles hit airfields on Friday last week, bringing the conflict to western Ukraine - until now considered a safe haven.

“My other relatives chose to stay in Poland, but I was told they no longer accept refugees there,” she says.

THUMBNAIL IMAGE: A child sleeps on a makeshift bed in Poland, having escaped from Russian shelling of Ukraine. (TRT World/Ylenia Gostoli)

HEADLINE IMAGE: A boy stands with a group of people fleeing Ukraine as they stand in a line after arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, on Monday, March 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)