“There are eight of us. Including two newborn babies. We were going to Poland when the air raid siren sounded. We had to get off and take cover in the subway.”
With these words, Brazilian Lys Silva Conceição, 28, sent news this Monday morning (28) to the report about her situation in the midst of the war in Kiev.
The group, formed by her, two couples with their daughters and a relative of one of them, went to the train station to try to board a car that would take them out of the Ukrainian capital, surrounded by Russian troops and bombed since the last week, heading to Poland.
The problem is that almost every civilian in the city of more than 3 million people did the same thing.
After 38 hours of curfew, in which anyone who set foot on the street would be considered a member of enemy groups and could be shot – in the words of the Ukrainian government itself -, the population left desperate to buy food and try to leave the country for land. , as the airports are closed because of the war.
Lys recorded videos of the crowd trying to get on the trains. “They changed the platform at the last minute, we had to run, but in the end no trains left because this bombing started,” she said, who had to leave the house where she lives with her Ukrainian husband after the neighborhood was bombed on Thursday. thursday (24th).
In the subway shelter, they had access to tea, coffee and a bathroom, as well as a warmer space for the babies.
Little Mikaela and Giovana were born in Ukraine, but they are Brazilian. Their parents turned to a surrogacy clinic in the country, which has become a very popular destination for foreigners seeking the procedure, due to the lower cost than in other countries and favorable legislation.
They traveled to Kiev to accompany the birth and take care of the bureaucratic procedures for registering their daughters’ nationality, but ended up surprised by the Russian invasion of the city.
They spent the last few days in the basement of a restaurant, accompanied by other foreign couples in the same situation, ten newborns – some of them, without their parents, who were unable to travel to Ukraine in time – and some nurses.
This Monday, the restaurant would close its doors and they had nowhere to go. To make matters worse, milk for the babies was running out, and the difficulty of getting a vehicle and fuel to make the journey to the train station was also gigantic.
“Everyone left and left them there. We were really afraid they would be homeless. We ended up getting a car with the clinic [contratada para cuidar da gestação de substituição]who went to get them”, says public servant Pamella Drummond, 28. Giovana’s parents are Pamella’s godparents, and her mother also went on the trip to Ukraine to support the couple.
Unable to catch the night trains because of the bomb alert, the group will try to board again in the morning. Lys’ husband had to stay — being Ukrainian, he cannot leave the country because he must be available to fight in the army.
Women and children are given priority boarding, but the chaos to get on the trains is high, and there are reports of foreigners being turned away by guards who give priority to Ukrainian families.
At the same train station, three Brazilians were also trying to find a way to escape. Medical student David Abu Gharbil and professional futsal players Moreno Santiago and Matheus Ramires posted videos of the route and the crowd trying to get into the crowded wagons on their social networks.
After the Russian invasion, the youths went to a hotel where dozens of other Brazilians were also staying, most of them players from Ukrainian first division football teams and their families. On Saturday (26), the larger group managed to leave in several cars and is already in Romania. The trio, however, stayed behind — they made a video on social media complaining about being abandoned.
This Monday, they even got on a train, but ended up being pushed out by the conductor, to the sound of racist words.
“He had agreed to take us, but out of nowhere he threw us out,” said Moreno Santiago, in a video posted on his Instagram. “He pushed David, David got hurt. He didn’t want to take us anymore, when he saw that we are moreno, that we had black people together, he kept talking nonsense, so it didn’t work. There’s a lot of racism here, and people are taking advantage of people’s difficult situation”, he reported.
They managed to buy a ticket online to try to leave within two days.
“You have to buy very quickly, you update the website and it’s over. We’re trying what we can, it’s too stressful. There’s no more gas, there’s the danger of being shot, the risk of being stopped, being arrested”, stated. “But we still have to think about living, getting out of the war, staying alive. We just want to get out of here.”
