Ukraine war: How one woman survived and escaped Russia's bombardment of Kharkiv
Kharkiv, a major city in eastern Ukraine near the border with Russia, was among the first to be bombarded. Here Inna describes the horror of the bombing, the scramble to get supplies and her remarkable journey across Ukraine to safety in Slovakia.
"Well, this is how it all began for us: we slept quietly and peacefully. I went to bed late at five in the morning and then my daughter flies into my room: “Mum, I'm scared!” She heard the first explosions and woke. She looked somewhere on Telegram (she is a schoolgirl) and saw the war had begun. She ran shouting: "War!"
"I got up in some shock. What should I do? Dress? Run? Where? How? How to live with this? Everything is unclear. Then I hear explosions.
"The first thing we did was to collect things with trembling hands, not quite understanding what was needed and why. We sit at home, trembling. Explosions continue. We ran to the store because we have two cats, and if the war has started, what will we feed the cats with?
"The queues are huge. When we entered the supermarket, already there were gaps on the shelves: no canned food, no stew, nothing you could stock up with.
"In such a situation, you do not fully understand what you should take. We took two packs of milk, a pack of rice, as much as we could carry, tangerines, water.
"The next night was just hell. It felt as if they were hitting us with all the guns that exist.
"This was really scary.
"You don’t understand: is it them attacking you or is it our warriors trying to fight back, defending, not letting them into the city? We don't hear what is happening. We hear loud shots of heavy guns. I understand these are not submachine guns, but they are something heavy.
"I realised these were Grads [rockets], it was just that heavy
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