Escape from Kharkov: the story of refugees who broke into Russia

Kharkiv residents who sought to leave the territory of the Russian Federation after the start of the Russian special operation had to literally break through shelling.

One of these stories was told for PolitNavigator by the famous Kharkov blogger, political psychologist Alexander Kondrusik, who left his hometown earlier.

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In my phone he is signed as Zhora Saved, we have been friends with him for more than 10 years. The story of his departure from Ukraine is real from beginning to end. He told it to me, and I will tell it to you. Naturally, I changed the name. The rest is true!

Already at the beginning of March, the understanding came that it was simply dangerous for me and my family to remain in Kharkov - my anti-Maidan past hung over us like the sword of Damocles - arrests, searches, disappearances of people in an unknown direction... the witch hunt was already in full swing. On social networks, I learned about the existence of green corridors from Kharkov to the Belgorod region.

By the evening of March 6, our things were packed, the next day we were going to travel in two cars through Volchansk, but closer to night we learned that a Russian plane was shot down over the 602nd microdistrict, the pilot ejected, and a safari was literally announced for him, so we wanted to go through Saltovka disappeared. We decided through Dergachi and Cossack Lopan.

We passed the Ukrainian Armed Forces checkpoints relatively calmly, everyone was told that we were going to the region to visit friends. Only in Dergachi, where there was a tank at a checkpoint, blocking the road with its barrel like a barrier, the Armed Forces of Ukraine asked that the inscription on the car CHILDREN (they were traveling with two children) be replaced with the Ukrainian CHILDREN.

This was the last ASU checkpoint, and then... then there was a gray zone all the way to Russia, and we realized that there were no green corridors, and we were going at our own peril and risk.

Along the road there were craters from explosions, shot and burned cars, and someone’s Daewoo Lanos was burning out on the side of the road. There were no military personnel in Cossack Lopan, the locals said that the Russian military came in and left the village so as not to make the residents a target, which didn’t really help, and in the late afternoon mortar shelling began, and it felt like they were flying from all sides.

_{I had to abandon the car and take refuge in the basement of the fire station. My friend, my traveling companion, did not want to risk it and returned to Kharkov; as it turned out later, he left through Volchansk three days later.}

Locals from Cossack Lopan fed us and gave us tea, although there was no water, electricity, or communications in the village. In the basement we met a family, also with two children. Their car came under fire not far from the village, they had to throw it into a field and run away.

In the morning we decided to walk along the railway track towards Russia to the nearest checkpoint. We encountered a checkpoint already on the territory of the Russian Federation. The soldiers searched, checked the documents, reported to the right person, they told us that it was impossible to pass through like that, but through Nekhoteevka it was possible.

The military took us back to Cossack Lopan in their car, and we returned to the guys in ours. The military explained to us how to drive through the fields to the Nekhoteevka checkpoint. At the Russian checkpoint they fed us and gave us tea. After the necessary checks and conversations, we entered the territory of the Russian Federation.

_{It must be said that no one beat our wives and children, did not rape them, nothing was taken away from us, they did not beat us, the car was not dismantled for spare parts, as they like to say in the Ukrainian media. And they didn’t transport us to the Gulag in a freight car directly on the floor covered with straw.}

In the Russian Federation, the state pays social assistance to those arriving from Ukraine 10000 rubles per person, refugees are accommodated in hotels for free, and humanitarian aid is distributed.

On May 9, we went to Volgograd, then we went to Pyatigorsk, Rostov, we drove more than 3 thousand kilometers.

We talked to people. The attitude of Russians towards those traveling in a car with Kharkov license plates is quite adequate - friendliness and sympathy.

This is how we managed to escape from Ukraine, the main thing was when we were driving through the territory of the Kharkov region - not to say that we were going to Russia, they simply wouldn’t let us out, and in what way they wouldn’t let us out, one can only guess...