“It was a powerful blast wave! Older women who were selling herbs near the metro station dropped to the ground”

Halyna Leshchenko came under fire in Kyiv. She waited for an air-raid siren to go off in an underground passage. She decided too soon that the danger was over. She went to the surface. The blast wave almost knocked her down! There were glass fragments everywhere. The buildings were damaged.

A few days later, Halyna left for Poland. She was taken in by a center for Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw. The war, she laments, took away her strength and health. It scattered her family all over the world.