Natalia’s tears froze on her cheek as she was waiting for a bus to take her from Moldova’s border village of Palanca to the capital in Chisinau.
Sitting just 40km from Odessa, the 67-year-old Ukrainian refugee’s next stop is Moldexpo. Previously an international exhibition centre, it had been turned into a Covid testing facility, and is now being used as the main refugee reception and triage point in Moldova.
‘It was terrible, they were bombing civilians and infrastructure with banned munitions. I saw how a bus with pregnant women was getting shot at’
– Natalia, Ukrainian refugee
Natalia escaped with her daughter Tatiana from Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine that has been under Russian attack for more than a week now.
“It was terrible, they were bombing civilians and infrastructure with banned munitions,” Natalia told Middle East Eye. “I saw how a bus with pregnant women was getting shot at.”
