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In the Polish border town of Przemysl, some of those who are fleeing, mostly women and children, are exhausted and express a simple wish that the war and violence would stop.
“All day crying from the pain of having to part with loved ones, with my husband, my parents,” said Alexandra Beltuygova, 33, who fled from Dnipro, a city between the embattled metropolises of Kyiv and Mariupol. “I understand that we may not see them. I wish this war would end,” she said.
At a refugee center in Suceava in northern Romania, 28-year-old Lesia Ostrovska watched over her 1-year-old son as her daughter, who is 8, played nearby with other children displaced by the war.
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In Przemysl, some recounted being witnesses to military attacks on civilians, something Russia continues to deny. “I saw destroyed houses and fighting. I saw a lot of tanks when I was driving from Kyiv. I know that a house near us was completely destroyed this morning,” said Inessa Armashova, 40, a resident of the Ukrainian capital. “Many people fled. But many cannot leave, sick children or sick elderly people.” The continued push by Russian forces toward Kyiv comes a day after Russia escalated its offensive by launching airstrikes close to the Polish border, raising fears in the West that the fight was edging closer to the EU and members of the NATO military alliance. Those strikes, which involved waves of deadly Russian missiles hitting a military training base less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Ukraine’s border with NATO member Poland on Sunday, killed at least 35 people and appeared to be the westernmost target struck during Russia’s 19-day invasion of Ukraine.
Residents of the Polish village of Wielkie Oczy, just two kilometers (over a mile) from the border, were jolted awake in the middle of the night by the sounds of the blasts. “My son went out to the balcony and the neighbors were already awoken and the dogs in the whole village started to bark,” said Franciek Sawicki, 77, who heard the missile attack. “We could see the glow above the forest. It was very noisy and I could hear a loud explosion. And at that moment I knew it was an attack near the border.” The proximity of the attack to Poland dashed the sense of safety in western Ukraine, which until now had mostly remained free of Russian attacks, and raised the possibility that the NATO alliance could be drawn into the fight.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a “black day,” and again urged NATO leaders to establish a no-fly zone over the country, a plea that the West has said could escalate the war to a nuclear confrontation.
But Anjela, 55, a Ukrainian refugee from Poltava who wouldn’t give her last name, said after arriving in Poland that only a NATO intervention could bring an end to the violence in Ukraine.
“I don’t know when I will see my husband. I don’t know when my children will return home,” she said. “I beg you, it depends only on you, close the sky, everything else we will do ourselves.”