Snowfall in western Ukraine at night, and the city of Lviv is even more picturesque under its fresh white blanket, Richard Pendblebury told the Daily Mail from the city of Lviv.
But for the hundreds of thousands fleeing the Russian invasion, the icy winds and insidious conditions of a classic Eastern European winter are another burden to bear.
No more than mothers on the move with their babies and young children.
Sometimes at one point they were driven from their homes by the war and now travel west – often without their partners left to fight – in sub-zero temperatures.
Snowfall in western Ukraine at night, and the city of Lviv is even more picturesque under its fresh white blanket, writes Richard Pendbury for the Daily Mail from the city of Lviv
Refugees fleeing the conflict in neighboring Ukraine await transportation to the Romanian-Ukrainian border in Siret, Roma
Scenes at Lviv railway station in western Ukraine as thousands of women and children try to catch trains to Poland to escape battle
Still, they arrive here from the north, east and south as Putin’s forces try to tighten their grip on their neighbor’s throat.
You have probably never heard of the industrial city of Zaporozhye.
Neither have I. so far. It is located northwest of the fierce seaport of Mariupol, on the mighty Dnieper River, which flows from the besieged capital Kyiv to the Black Sea.
The proof here yesterday was that the war had set up its tent in Zaporozhye as well.
Women and children from entire neighborhoods of the city have passed through Ukraine to Lviv in the last 48 hours, they told me.
“We heard bombs, so we decided to leave,” said a young mother.
She was traveling with her own mother and only child, 20-month-old son Yang, whose cheeks were flushed with cold. She did not want to give her own name. She was scared.
“My husband stayed to defend our home,” she said. “It is very difficult to travel with a baby during a war.
“The trains are very crowded. We do not know what we will do next.
“We can take shelter in Lviv or maybe we will go abroad.
“All we managed to do before we left was pack the most important things for Ian; nothing more than what we could put in two little bags.
There was not enough light in the bomb shelters at home and the air was bad.
There was another group of mothers and children from Zaporizhia nearby, surrounded by scarce luggage, their breaths chilling in the cold.
“We were afraid for our children’s lives,” Nastya said, hugging her one-year-old son Matthew.
“Because of Putin, they made us leave our homes and come here. We hope to reach Poland.
She said her husband and father were left to fight. “We live near the airport and it was attacked yesterday, so we had to leave.
“Our neighborhood is almost empty.”
Their escape was hampered, she said, as the Ukrainian military had to demolish a bridge over the Dnieper to stop Russia’s advance.
Ukraine has denied reports that the city, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, has fallen into Russian hands.
Nastya said her seven-year-old daughter, Lera, was particularly affected by the ordeal.
“Matthew is too young to understand, but she knows exactly what’s going on. At the bomb shelter, where we spent two days, she was very scared and crying. Did Nastya have a message for the outside world? “Yes, please leave us to live in peace in our homes.”
At the main railway station in Lviv, two young women – Katya and Maria – from a city on the Dnieper River had collected a pile of luggage and travel boxes for their three dogs Mario, Misha and Vasily and two cats Bucks and Korsha.
“I know it looks a little strange,” Katya said. “But they are so dear to our hearts. How could we leave them?
She then went on a rage against the Russian president, bursting into tears as she did so.
“It’s hard to realize that we lost our old life because of a sick person,” she said.
“He doesn’t care about us.” He is not a nice person. In fact, he is not human. I don’t have a large enough English dictionary to describe how I feel about this man.
Natalia was a young mother from Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which was attacked by Russia, with heavy civilian casualties reported.
She was with her five-year-old daughter, Alicia.
“We were bombed, we had to leave,” Natalia said.
Nearby, a little boy was pushing his toy car on the frozen sidewalk, as little boys do, even when surrounded by an accident. Nestor is four.
He is also from Kharkov and traveled with his 22-year-old parents Dmitry and Angelina. They were accompanied by the teenager’s brother Dmitry Alexei and his friend Daniel.
Two days earlier, they left home because “the bombing is all around us,” Dmitry said. A telephone conversation with a relative in Kharkov had to be stopped due to new attacks.
More than 400,000 people have fled Ukraine since Friday, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
But many more are moving in this country.
Authorities are preparing for the worst. We visited one of the main maternity hospitals in Lviv.
Walls of sandbags piled up along the lowest windows.
The basement was being prepared for the reception and treatment of war wounded, not expectant mothers.
The happy moments, the wonders of life must play a second violin of the bloody consequences of the Kremlin’s vicious ambition. Spring seems far away here.