Lviv, an exit from hell that's defying the war | Ground Report
India Today
Russia-Ukraine war news: In this instalment of her Ground Report series, India Today's Mausami Singh describes how she and cameraperson Parmender Sharma reached Ukraine's Lviv.
RECAP: India Today’s Mausami Singh and cameraperson Parmender Sharma took a bus from Lublin in Poland to go to Lviv, around 70 kilometres inside the Ukraine border. She narrated the hopes and hardships of the Ukrainian refugees with whom she rode in the last instalment of this series of Ground Report. In this instalment, she continues her journey into Ukraine.
AND NOW...
As we reached the Poland-Ukraine border, the Polish border authorities asked us to alight the bus for document checks. It was dark, windy, and absolutely freezing. We walked up to the checkpoint and queued up as the elderly people gingerly stepped out of the vehicle.
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A short lean woman, carrying a toddler — a girl and a boy — in each arm, walked right up to the front.
Awoken from sleep, her son was crying inconsolably and had grown red in the face. She would peck him on the cheek and then do the same with her daughter. She was unable to hold them together for long. So, she laid one of her children down for a bit at intervals as she tended to the other child.
As I looked at the people in the queue, I saw them blankly stare into the dark of the night. But all the blank faces bore a tinge of determination of returning ‘home’, irrespective of the consequences.
