At 6pm local time there were huge queues of cars trying to escape Kyiv and to head west, writes Luke Harding in the Ukrainian capital.
The main road out of the city was jammed with vehicles including buses and taxis. The queue was stationary for much of the time. Drivers stood next to their vehicles, patiently waiting for the route to clear.
Over at the capital’s central train station, Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi, hundreds of passengers were seeking to leave. There were long queues for tickets and information. Several trains had been cancelled - red on the departure board - but others were functioning as normal. Many milled around with luggage but no tickets.
A group of Pakistani students from the International European university in Kyiv said they had found a taxi to take them to Lviv for $500. One said:
We’ve been here for our studies. Maybe we will stay in the west, maybe we will come back.
We can’t go to Poland because we don’t have visas.
Several families were among those trying to depart including a group with a baby in a pram, and a couple with a pet dachshund.
This vast human exodus seemed out of place in 2022 and more of a throw-back to Europe’s dark last century, all caused by the paranoid behaviour of one man.
www.aamulehti.fi
