Women, children escape, men return to fight

At the Ukraine border it’s two-way traffic: women and children crossing out for their safety, men coming in to take up arms.

Refugees arrive at the Ukraine border at Medyka, Poland. Picture: Annabel Moeller

On the Medyka crossing at the Polish-Ukraine border, a dozen Ukrainian miners tumbled from a large black transit van, unfolding their legs and sorting their bags in the crisp minus air after a non-stop two-day journey.

This was the final stop of their four-country odyssey having left Rybinsk, 250km north of Moscow on Friday evening and travelling 2200km through Latvia, Lithuania and down through Poland.

Usually to return home to Ukraine they would have headed almost due south for 1800km through Belarus and skirting west of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. But thousands of Russian troops and heavy fighting were in their way so they circled around.

In Medyka, wearing near identikit jeans and blue jackets and ­exuding a determined and restless energy, they pulled out final pay check envelopes from their mine in northern Russia to pay their sympathetic Russian driver his dues and petrol money.

Once in Ukraine, the men planned to walk 10km to rendezvous with a small convoy of cars loaded with weapons for them.

A dozen coal miners from Rybinski, Russia, about 250km north of Moscow who travelled 2000km through four countries over two days – returning to the Ukraine to fight for their country.

When Vladimir Putin’s forces launched their multi-pronged invasion last Thursday, it took the men less than a shift at the coalmine in Rybinsk to get organised.

“No delay,’’ said Franko, explaining the Ukrainians at the mine had no hesitation to down tools. Then, as he added defiantly “we fight”, two of his friends clenched their fists and one spat on the ground: “Putin, (go to) hell!”

For them, the light snow was nothing but a small inconvenience. Their destination was Ivano-Frankivsk, a fortress city at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.

Ivano-Frankivsk has been under the control of the Austrian-Hungarians, Poles, Nazi Germany and then Soviet Union before being part of Ukraine. These men won’t willingly allow it to fall into Russian hands.

About 15km away at the Przemysl Glowny train station, the defiance of the miners was mirrored in the faces of a queue of 200 people waiting for a train to Lviv.

The earlier train had not ­allowed any passengers as it was loaded up with medical supplies, boxes of water, nappies and bags of warm clothing for distribution at the other end.

Kyiv student Leka Burduihova, who had been travelling in Poland when the invasion happened, was terrified. Travelling back alone, she broke down in tears explaining how she had no idea how she would get from Lviv to Sumy, where her distraught 60-year-old mother lives, because the trains are no longer operating.

Sumy is near the Russian border and has been overrun by the Russian invaders.

Her older sister Nika is trapped too, in the city of Kharkiv, which has come under some of the heaviest fighting, including the use of banned cluster bombs.

“I am just very, very scared,” Leka said. “Mum tells me to stay where I am, but she is very frightened and I just want to go home to help her,’’ she added, promising to let us know how she fares.

Ahead in the queue, Kate ­Inavov hears our conversation and reassures Leka that there will be “hundreds of strangers in Lviv who will help get you to where you need to be’’.

Kate, 40, had spent three days on planes and trains from France and was trying to get to her family who live near the Kyiv airport.

The building next door to theirs lost five floors in a missile attack two days ago.

“I am not afraid, she said, defiantly. “I feel terrible being here in Poland, I want to be with my family. Ukraine is my land and I want to help. I don’t have children, and if I had I would probably be going the other way.’’

She said she wanted to try and move her parents to the west of the country away from the most intense attacks but knows that plan may be impossible now with the Russian advance seeking to encircle the capital.