[News] Ukraine war: Family reunited 18 months after tearful goodbye on Platform 5

[BirSaNN]

In early 2022, as war was breaking out, a Ukrainian family said a painful goodbye to their father amid chaotic scenes at Lviv railway station. Almost 18 months later, Fergal Keane travelled with them as they prepared to come back together.

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The children are struggling to sleep. For at least the last week, 10-year-old Anna has been asking her mother Oksana how many days to departure.

She hops from one leg to the other. Then disappears to her bedroom to find a painting she has done at school. It is a rendering of their little flat here in Surrey, up a quiet cul-de-sac in the shade of tall trees, and she will present it to her father when they meet.

There is snow falling in the foreground. It is an image of winter, like the country she left behind 18 months ago.

But they are going back. In just two days' time, she reminds me. Just two days.

Maybe because he is four years older, growing into the role of the wise big brother, Ilya is more reserved in the joy of his anticipation.

I ask him how he feels about seeing his father for the first time since March 2022 - the first time since they said farewell at Lviv railway station in the days after the Russian invasion.

"I'm so happy. Happy." He repeats himself as if he had been hoarding the word for this moment on the eve of departure. Now that they were actually returning it could fly free from his lips.

First they will go to Krakow in Poland, then by road to the border, and finally onto the train that will carry them across Ukraine to the reunion with Jenia - the father and husband they have missed so much every day and night of exile.

Oksana says she cannot believe they will see him soon. "It's like a dream." Then she asks herself a question, and answers all at once: "Can I believe it? Yes!"

The story of exile from Ukraine begins in the darkness of 24 February 2022, when the first Russian artillery shells began to land in the Kharkiv suburb of Saltivka. The couple had been watching the news about a troop build-up just over the border, but like so many Ukrainians, Oksana and Jenia wanted to protect their children from the fear of war.

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Then came the blasts. The rattling of windowpanes. The news of the first deaths. The long queues forming outside food stores and petrol stations.

By night they obeyed the authorities' order to observe a blackout. "We gathered with the children in a little space where no light could be seen from outside and we played board games," Oksana recalls.

But war is the ultimate purveyor of cruel choices. Staying at home meant risking death under the shelling or direct assault by Russian troops. In those days of late February and early March last year, nobody - no leader in Ukraine or abroad, no journalist or security expert - knew if the Russians would be stopped.

Leaving for safety in the West meant separating the family. Men between 18 and 60 - those considered of fighting age - were forbidden from going.

link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66340099