1-MAR: WARSAW-KORCZOWA-LVIV-WARSAW
1st March, 2022
After a decent night’s kip, I started to think how I could help further and how I could make a bigger impact.
I wanted to see over the border as I had heard there were impenetrable lines of helpless mothers and children and they were waiting up to 2–3 days to get processed, out in the cold and with no sleep…
The next morning, I blurted out that I was driving into Ukraine. Immediately my partner burst into tears and stamped her foot down and insisted that I do nothing of the sort. I had forgotten that I was now in a partnership and could not just run off gallivanting into the unknown like I used to and without her consent. So, I sat there and pondered on how I could be gone, without her knowledge, for 24 hours.
Little did I know that trusty Facebook had the perfect plan laid out for me. Yuliya’s cousins had seen that we got her first cousin out of Ukraine and they wanted to do the same. Her other cousins called to say they needed to flee and she looked at me with a glint of despair and said, “Rusty, can we go pick up my cousins and nieces”?? So, it was now confirmed and sanctioned by Yuliya herself, I had her blessing!! However, this cousin was with a one-year-old baby and it seemed pointless to go all the way to Slovakia as there was no one else to help there. And so, I arranged for her cousin to hitch a ride to Lviv and I would go and meet her. Yuliya agreed with hesitation, but I had her family extraction clashing with her leniency. I got in touch with an American journalist friend of mine, Will, who agreed to join me and we plotted our next move.
The Korczowa border kept coming up with the best place to enter from. So, we legged it there in another 5-seater free rental and bunny hopped over the border with only a 15-minute wait. As we entered Ukraine, we were presented with eight military check points who let us through with ease until we reached the sixth one. They must have had some intelligence officers here as we were both quizzed in depth about our nationalities and why we had such mixed-up documents. Me being Australian with a Polish passport that was issued at the Polish embassy in Germany and I can’t speak a work of Polish, Will is American and fluent in Polish. It seemed a little suspicious.
After numerous questions about specific Polish foods and us having handed the military personal bundles of proper polish kabanos, they gathered that we were not Russian spies and instead just typical expats and allowed to pass through.
We entered the Lviv centre around 3am and the curfew and martial law was in full swing. Every one or two kilometres that we drove we were pulled up by a patrol or police car and inspected, documents checked and every time commended on what we were doing and allowed through. The streets were deserted, empty and only the soft sound of snow falling onto the cobblestones was heard…
Next up: 3-MAR: LVIV TRAIN STATION
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