In Dnipro, the crowd of Ukrainian refugees waiting for a train
The wait, the crush, the farewells… Thousands of people gather at the Dnipro station in central Ukraine to try to catch a train west and flee the Russian bombardments.
Residents said they did not want to wait for Dnipro to become “the next Kharkiv”Ukraine’s second city in the northeast, near the Russian border, the scene of some of the heaviest bombardments since the start of the war.
Men of draft age, between 18 and 60, cannot leave Ukraine, but many had come to say goodbye to their wives, mothers and children when they left. “We send our wives and children to Lviv, maybe further, and we stay here. We’re trying to stay positive but it’s a horrible situation.”describes Andrey Kyrychenko, 40, a mason from Kharkiv.
Station staff said they had no information on when the trains were arriving or where they were going, even though most passengers were planning to go to Lviv.
‘I don’t care where my family ends up as long as it’s far from Kharkiv’, calculates Nikola Kyrychenkoi, 44, a driver who intends to return to Kharkiv once his relatives are on the train. His elderly parents, unable to move, stayed there.
Faced with the mass of passengers seeking to leave the city, the municipality announced that it would install a special barrier to protect the crowd, in a press release on Telegram messaging. Mayor Boris Filatov also called on the men who came to say goodbye to their families to stay away from the docks.