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| Irpin near Kyiv: A man and a child escape from the town of, after heavy shelling on the only escape route used by locals, while Russian troops advance towards the capital |
Polina Okhrytkova, 19, and Marta Pysanko, 18, first traded their arts studies at Kyiv University for building Molotov cocktails to help fend off the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then, as the bombs started raining down, their parents urged them to flee.
The two friends took with them Okhrytkovaโs 17-year-old cousin and Pysankoโs 14-year-old brother, traveling in packed trains westwards to the border with Poland and by bus onwards to Berlin, where they found temporary refuge last week.
But they worry about those, including their parents, who stayed behind to fight or look after older relatives.
โYesterday we were like kids and today we have two โchildrenโ and must go to another country,โ said Pysanko, tears trickling down her cheeks.
โWe just hope this war is over as soon as possible and we can return to Kyiv and help to rebuild it.โ
The four teenagers made it to the German capital courtesy of basketball club Alba Berlin that sent a bus full of donations to Ukraine and brought back refugees, part of an outpouring of solidarity for the former Soviet republic.
Now they are staying with biologist and mother-of-one Katja Schuetz. Germans have offered up 300,000 private homes to house refugees from Ukraine, Germanyโs interior ministry said on Thursday.
โWe are here in safety but our families are in Ukraine and we canโt help anything,โ said Okhrytkova. โWe just help our children, Makar and Masha.โ
Nearly 147,000 people fleeing the war in Ukraine have registered in Germany so far, an interior ministry spokesperson said on Monday, adding that the actual number could be much higher.
Schuetz said she was touched by the teenagersโ resilience.
โThey are saying โwe will return and rebuild everything even more beautifully, even though everything is destroyed.’โ she said. โThey have so much power still and so much hope for the future.โ
Ukrainians were not a soft people, said Pysanko.
โWe are really strong and we are going to rebuild our country. And it will be rebuilt by people like me and Polina.โ
REUTERS
