Scenes of sorrow, fear and courage at Ukraine’s main refugee hub

Maria Yatsenko resembles the Madonnas one sees in Lviv's myriad churches, clutching her infant son to her chest, smiling faintly at times, more often a vision of sorrow.

Yatsenko (34), her father, grandmother and Maria's five children arrived at Lviv train station after a week-long trek from Dnipro, central Ukraine. They waited with the crowd of refugees in the underground passageway leading to the famous platform 5, from which trains depart for Poland.

Lviv has been the main departure point for 2.5 million refugees who have fled Ukraine since the war started on February 24th. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, another two million Ukrainians have been displaced internally. Mayor Andriy Sadovyi says his city of 700,000 has taken in 200,000 and can take no more. Tens of thousands continue to go through the train station daily.

“This is my baby, and this also, and this and this and this,” the Madonna of the railway tunnel says proudly, pointing to her two daughters and three sons, their faces framed against the cold granite wall.

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Images of destroyed buildings and dead civilians so terrified Yatsenko’s family that they left Dnipro before the war reached their city. The journey took an inordinate amount of time because roads were clogged with refugees and there were long waits at every checkpoint.

I am proud of the army of my country. Really proud

Yatsenko’s husband, Yevheniiy, stayed behind. Her eyes fill with tears when she pronounces his name. “He is not fighting but he is working for our army and for our victory.” Tears flow down her cheeks. “I hope that we will come home some day,” she says, her voice cracking.

Like other Ukrainians, Yatsenko expresses gratitude to Nato and the EU, but thinks the West could do "much more" to help Ukraine. "A no-fly zone would be great. Soldiers on the ground? I don't know. Maybe help by giving us weapons. But I am proud of the army of my country. Really proud," she says through more tears.

In a lighter moment, she tells us that she was a child tennis champion, then a sports judge. She boasts of having attended all home matches for Ukraine’s Davis and Billie Jean King Cup contestants since 2004.

Yatsenko’s grandmother, Maya, is stooped over on crutches, with a pink blanket over her shoulders. “In 1942, she was evacuated to western Siberia,” Yatsenko recounts. “She didn’t come home until 1947, and now she is evacuating for the second time because of war and she is 88 years old. Again. How could it be?”

Rita Anatoliivna, a 64-year-old retired school teacher, has also been displaced for the second time, though at a much shorter interval than Yatsenko's grandmother. Anatoliivna and her grandsons, Maksym and Yevheniy, aged 16 and 11, fled their home in Slovyansk, Donbas, on Wednesday.

"This is the second time we are living through this," she says. "Slovyansk was the epicentre of the fighting in 2014... We barely escaped while they were shelling the city." The family fled to Crimea then. The peninsula had already been annexed by Russia, but it was calm.

Anatoliivna waited two weeks to flee this time. “Until they started shelling us, we were okay,” she says. “We were just listening to the news. But then they started sending rockets. It was scary.” The three packed in half an hour, and ran under shellfire to the train station.

Everyone I interviewed at Lviv train station wept at some point. For Anatoliivna, it was the moment when she told of leaving her sister and disabled brother-in-law behind. Yet she and her grandsons are more fortunate than some. Anatoliivna’s daughter, Nelya, is the supervisor of a factory warehouse in Poznan, Poland, and will fetch them in Przemysl.

Tetiana, from Toretsk in the Donetsk region, had neither Maria’s gentle sorrow nor Rita’s certainty of finding refuge. She and nine relatives stood shivering in the entry to the train station, minutes after completing a 24-hour journey from the east, glassy-eyed with fatigue and anger.

“How would you feel if the bullets were flying around you?” Tetiana asks sarcastically. “I am alive and I am glad that I am alive. Maybe it’s supposed to be this way?” She worked as a coal miner in Toretsk and says life was great before the war.

We don't know this city. Our phones are dead. They're out of juice

It is minus 4 degrees and Tetiana’s group hasn’t a clue where to go or what to do. Would they like to stay on in Lviv? “If the war doesn’t come here, maybe. And if I find shelter. Because we have no place to go. We could not find an apartment to rent.” She longs for a place free of fighting, and a roof over her head.

“The volunteers say, ‘We gave you the information. You have to manage for yourselves now,” Tetiana says bitterly. “We don’t know this city. Our phones are dead. They’re out of juice.” Then she begins to cry.

Heated blue tents on the esplanade in front of the station provide a brief resting place for women and children to warm themselves before moving on. White tents, run by the International Committee of the Red Cross, provide hot drinks and food.

Oleksiy Koshovskyi, a 58-year-old volunteer, stands outside a blue tent, offering advice to the refugees. Koshovskyi is a refugee himself, from Kyiv, where he was the director of a brokerage company. He sent his wife and their two cats to friends in Spain and found a room in a home in Lviv.

“I am not going back to Kyiv because I don’t want to hide in the basement,” Koshovskyi says. He has no reason to return there, because “there are too many volunteers in the territorial defence who know how to fight already. I have no military experience.”

Koshovskyi asks to have his picture taken with his fellow volunteer, Oleh Bazarkin (49). Bazarkin worked as a valuator for Koshovskyi’s firm in Kyiv, estimating the worth of property and cars. He has sent his family to Germany.

For a few minutes, Koshovskyi appears to be the most cheerful man in Lviv. Then he too tears up. “I am very sorry for the children and women and elderly who I see at the railway station. It is really difficult psychologically. I take it close to heart. I have to encourage people. I have to cheer them up. I believe in the Ukrainian army, that they will win. And I wish Putin would die.”

Another Oleksiy, this one a professional pianist known as Alex Karpenko, age 27, also tries to boost the morale of refugees. Karpenko started playing on a piano donated by the music school, under the portico of the train station, a few days after the war started.

I just sit at the piano and my fingers start playing and I express my soul with music

“Music is an antidote to stress. It unites people and gives them hope,” Karpenko says. “The biggest reward I get is the smiles of people.” It is so cold that he must wear gloves while he plays. “I am still cold, even with gloves but it’s okay,” he says. “The guys who are fighting have a harder time. This is my way of fighting.”

Karpenko favours what he calls “calm music, easy music. Yann Tiersen, Ludovico Einaudi”. He is also composing his own songs at Lviv railway station. “I just sit at the piano and my fingers start playing and I express my soul with music.”