Alexandra Markevitch fled Kharkiv on Sunday, as Russian shells rained down on her neighbourhood and gunfire rattled her metropolis. She ran together with her son Pasha to the station, with just a few paperwork, household pictures, and heat garments in hand, they usually made it onto a practice headed west. When a stress wave from a rocket strike hit the practice, Markevitch feared it might be derailed, she mentioned. When the practice made it previous the outskirts of town and the sounds of the blasts, she tried to consolation Pasha. It was his eleventh birthday.