Two more days of travel, then their escape from Ukraine will end in Sardinia. They are Riccardo, a 41-year-old Sardinian, his wife Iryna and their little son who is just over a year old. And just to save the child, the parents yesterday decided to leave in a hurry and get on a plane before the invasion of Moscow. After leaving their home in Kharkiv, near the Russian border and therefore now under siege, they packed a few things in their suitcase and left. First stop in Poland, then Rome and in two days they will arrive in Sardinia where Riccardo's relatives live.

"We fled from the Russians because there will be genocide and Putin said it explicitly: for him 'Ukrainians don't exist' and his intention is to 'Russify' Ukraine", says the 41-year-old, who works in a legal office of a multinational. It was 2018 when he joined his Iryna - university professor - in Kiev, to get married and build a new family.

"Our child saved us, it is to preserve him that we left, otherwise we would have stayed, maybe just a few more days and it would have been too late", recalls the man. In Ukraine they left Iryna's relatives. " They are locked in the house in Kiev, they are stuck there. Fortunately, the internet still works and we can talk to each other. Many are trying to escape to Poland, but there are lines of cars exiting the cities everywhere, it is almost impossible ". And also" our friends remained there - he continues - a couple, an Italian and a Ukrainian, like us, they had decided to leave on the weekend and did not have time, but no one could have thought that the Russians would enter so soon ".

Riccardo thinks they will never be able to go home: "It's over, there will be a genocide."

(Unioneonline / ss)

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