Russia-Ukraine war updates: Hundreds of Ukrainians flee to Hungary on foot, in cars

Russia-Ukraine war news updates: Hundreds of Ukrainians are fleeing to neighbouring Hungary as Russian invasion gathers steam across the country.

The queue of cars lining up to get into Hungary from Ukraine was long. Hundreds of others came on foot.They were escaping empty cash machines, bare supermarket shelves and long waits at petrol stations on a day of fierce fighting in Ukraine after Russia's shock invasion.

"Anyone who can is fleeing," said Krisztian Szavla, one of the first refugees who arrived in Hungary Thursday from Ukraine's western region of Transcarpathia, where a large Hungarian minority lives.

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"We don't want to go through what those over the mountains in the east are experiencing, waking up to sirens and the Russians bombing your city," the 28-year-old told AFP at a petrol station at Zahony, on the Hungarian side of the border.

Ukraine's Transcarpathia region is cut off from the rest of the country by the Carpathian mountain range, and is home to a patchwork of ethnic groups with the 130,000-strong Hungarian community the largest.

"On the other side there are hour-long queues for petrol, the bank ATMs have emptied, and the shop shelves are clearing due to the throngs of people," said Szavla, a marketing professional who plans to stay temporarily with friends in eastern Hungary.

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