Man who fled Ukraine on foot says men were dragged from families to conscript - Metro.co.uk

Fighting-age men were said to have been forced out of their cars (Picture: Manny Marotta/PA Wire)

An American who walked for 20 hours with thousands of Ukrainian refugees has revealed how fighting-age men were dragged from their screaming families to join the increasingly vain fight against Russia.

Manny Marrotta, 25, from Pennsylvania, said he had been in the western city of Lviv working as a freelance journalist for 10 days when Putin announced his invasion on Thursday.

He joined a mass of civilians fleeing to the Polish border 43 miles away in the afternoon after waking up to the sound of an air raid siren and hearing rumours of an impending bombing.

With trains fully booked and car hires and public buses suspended, he made a ‘desperate’ decision to begin walking west on what would prove to be a ‘harrowing’ treak.

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He described scenes amounting to a ‘humanitarian nightmare’ as men, women and children packed the roads in buses, cars and on foot.

Mr Marrotta said: ‘You had elderly people walking alone on the side of the road with these sticks, hobbling along.

‘There was one grandmother that told me she was going to Poland – Poland was far away, it’s amazing the result of these people (trying) to escape.’

‘It was about 10, 15 kilometres from the border and Ukrainian army soldiers started coming out onto the streets with speakers, announcing “no Ukrainian man aged 18 to 60 is allowed to leave the country – you must go east and fight”‘.

Lviv Station was awash with stranded refugees after trains became fully booked (Picture: PA)

A vast queue of cars is crawling towards the Polish border (Picture: PA)

The Ukrainian government has announced conscription, meaning healthy adult men must enlist in the armed forces.

‘They were saying, “say goodbye to your girlfriend, to your wife, say goodbye to your mothers and daughters, you’re going east”.

‘I started seeing these surreal scenes of fathers saying, ” don’t want to leave my family,” and Ukrainian soldiers yanking them away … Mothers were protesting, they were screaming: “Why are you doing this?”

‘There was this guy standing up on a box saying “forget your wives, forget about your girlfriends – you need to defend your country. Don’t be a coward.”‘

Refugees were served tea as they arrived in Poland (Picture: PA)

The journalist described the ‘heartbreaking’ moment a 24-year-old Ukrainian man he had befriended was dragged away, adding: ‘He had no choice, he gave me this look that I’ll never forget, it was a sad sort of smile … I hope he’s okay.’

‘When I got to the border, I made friends with this 18-year-old Ukrainian kid … they conscripted him on the spot, it was just very brutal to see the terror in his eyes knowing he was going to go east and fight the Russians.’

The UN has warned Europe faces a wave of up to 4 million refugees if the conflict continues on its current footing.

Mr Marrotta said he was ‘inconsolably happy’ after reaching Poland but warned many Ukrainians were still ‘suffering dismally’ on the road.

He added: ‘The Western world should be should be aware of how terrifying this is for the Ukrainian people.’

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2022-02-25 18:31:00Z
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