Having come to Luxembourg and Germany for a week to visit her two sisters, Mariana Andreiko was ultimately stuck in Luxembourg on Thursday. She did not miss her plane to Kiev, but “the flight that was supposed to leave Frankfurt at 4pm was cancelled”. Since the massive attack of Russian troops on Ukraine, with air strikes and ground invasion, Ukraine announced early Thursday the closure of its airspace for civil aviation. Far too dangerous.
Mariana was supposed to return to Irpin, northwest of Kiev, but knew early on from her relatives that this was practically impossible because the Russians “have started bombing military facilities” and “because there is an airport in Gostomel”, very close to Irpin. In her misfortune she was lucky, because on Thursday afternoon Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that the military airport had fallen into the hands of the Russians, vowing to take it back.
The nearly 1,000 Ukrainians living in Luxembourg have been trembling since Thursday for their loved ones trapped in the flash invasion. “When the alarm clock went off at 6.20am this morning to go to school,” said Anna Dolya, a French teacher who has lived in Luxembourg for five years, “my husband came to me and said: ‘It’s starting!’ I understood immediately what was going on. We turned on the TV to follow the Ukrainian news and saw a map of the bombed cities…" Anna is in control of her emotions at this moment. She holds her son Frederic by the neck.
She looks at the crowd that has come to call on the international community to stop the war and Putin at Place Clairefontaine and confides what worries everyone there: “We are very worried about our families, our loved ones, our friends”. Anna is very worried about what will happen to her parents in Kiev: “They can’t come to Luxembourg, it’s too late”.
Enormous traffic jams have formed in the capital, as an innumerable number of people try to flee. But “the suitcases are ready” to “go and hide somewhere, I don’t know where”, Anna says.
Many people obviously want to leave Ukraine and Luxembourg must “try to bring these people and their families here,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean Asselborn said before the Chamber of Deputies on Thursday. He added: “We are not rejecting anyone”. Between 20 and 30 Luxembourgers are currently in Ukraine, according to his services.
“My mother was woken up by bombs in the Vinnytsia region,” said Tetyana Narcisse, who lives near Metz. Her family and friends “are completely panicked”, she said. She adds, convinced that “if we do nothing, in a few years it will happen here”. A conviction often repeated by Ukrainians whom our colleagues from RTL 5 Minutes met at the demonstration in Luxembourg City.
They all express the same fear: to suddenly lose contact with their loved ones. “For the moment I have contact, but I’m afraid that soon it will be cut off,” says Mariana Andreiko.
“We knew that Putin was mad… but not to this extent,” sighs Ksenia Korneva. She is Russian, but “half Ukrainian”. Today “it is a shame for us to be Russian”, she says, crying loudly and holding a sign that reads “Putin, enemy of the people”. And she manages to say that “there is a difference between the government and the Russian people”.
Her “friends and relatives in Russia don’t know what to do”. She decided to leave her country back in 2014 following Russia’s invasion of Crimea. “We left the country because it’s impossible to do business there honestly, without corruption”. She looks towards the crowd and says: “These are all my brothers and sisters. For me, what is happening is a tragedy.” A hand comes up and touches her shoulder, as someone comforts her.
-> Follow live updates about the crisis in Ukraine in our ticker
