“I’m waking up just because my granny called me saying there is war in the city,” she said. Pavlushko plans to travel on from Hungary to Poland, where her mother lives. But her grandmother is still at home in Zhytomyr, she said, and her father has stayed behind to join the fight against the invading Russian forces.
Long lines of cars and buses were backed up at checkpoints at the borders of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and non-EU member Moldova. Others crossed the borders on foot, dragging their possessions away from the war and into the security of the EU.
Several hundred refugees were gathered at a temporary reception center in the Hungarian border village of Beregsurany, where they awaited transportation to transit hubs that could take them further into Hungary and beyond.
Maria Pavlushko, 24, an information technology project manager from Zhytomyr, a city around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, said she had been on a skiing holiday in the Carpathian mountains when she got word from home last week that Russia’s invasion had begun.
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