- I'm in Ukraine
and like just about everybody leaving Kyiv today,
I spent about 10 hours so far in the car
and have gotten not that far away.
(pensive music)
The roads are packed because the civilian airspace
has been closed.
(siren wailing)
and there was real chaos
at the the main rail station in Kyiv.
The bus service, as far as we had observed,
was also shut down outta Kyiv.
And so going by road, fleeing by road west,
is really the only way to go.
(pensive music)
Many of the people I've been talking to across Ukraine
can't even get out of the cities they're in
mainly because they they're afraid to go outside.
They're hearing small arms fire, missiles,
all sorts of heavy military action right around them.
Some of them feel like they can't leave.
The gas stations locally have run outta gas
and they really don't know what to do.
So the folks who are on this long long drive west outta Kyiv
are really the lucky ones.
People who are fleeing the hostilities
are mostly going west.
And they're trying to get over the borders into Moldova,
Slovakia, Hungary, or Poland.
(quiet chime music)
You've seen people trying to get out in all sorts of ways.
We've passed masses of people
just simply trying to hitch hike on the highway.
We've seen people walking with, with luggage,
people on bikes, any which way they can.
This is a lengthy process.
And then also once they do get to the borders
depending on which country they're trying to get into,
the process of getting through immigration there
adds many hours on top of that.
It's too early to tell how this is all gonna go
in terms of whether or not we're looking
at a prolonged refugee crisis
or if there's gonna be stability in Kyiv
in other cities in the near term.
That doesn't seem likely.
(quiet music)