By Luiza Ilie

BUCHAREST, (Reuters) – Iryna and her husband Iryna Kyrychenko went to bed the night before Russia invaded Ukraine. They thought they’d take their daughters to see their grandmother that day.

They instead woke up to the sound of missile blasts in Kyiv, packed their clothes and ran.

First they went to friends in a village nearby, then to a city in western Ukraine, then across the Romanian border, leaving Kyrychenko’s husband, who at 38 is of conscription age, behind.

Iryna Kyrychenko a 37 year-old operations manager at a technology company and her 2 daughters, Xenia (11 and Alisa (7) reached Bucharest on the third day. It was miles from her life in Kyiv which she calls “very easy, very nice”.

By Sunday night, nearly 400,000 had fled to central Europe. There were queues for border crossings that stretched back for kilometers.

“When we drove, some rockets burst near us,” she said of their trip in the hotel room they booked near Bucharest’s main railway station.

It was dangerous. The children are afraid of flying and are alerted if there’s a loud noise.

They drove 500km (3 miles) to reach Chernivtsi (in western Ukraine), near Siret, which is close to Kyiv. Not all stations sold fuel.

Kyrychenko and her husband drove as far as they could to the border crossing, but there was so much traffic that Kyrychenko and her two daughters had to walk the 6km (4 mile) last leg.

Two hours later, the group crossed into Romania, were met by volunteers with hot drinks, food, and offer of transportation and lodging.

She said that the children were full of food and snacks. Xenia was playing on a tablet next to her. They were resting next to their school supplies from Kyiv, which the volunteers gave them teddy bears.

As she thought back to the time when “the children were weeping because they had left their father”, her voice broke.

After spending some time at a house for volunteers, Kyrychenko, Russian Ukrainian, continued on to Bucharest. There she spent frantic hours looking through Telegram channels and seeing photos of the destruction in her hometown. She also saw news reports about buildings, including one that had been hit by bombs.

Her company co-workers are also supported as she crosses borders to reach Bucharest or Warsaw.

It’s difficult to cross the border right now. There were 100-200 people crossing when we crossed, but it’s now only 3,000. The crowd is large, everyone is anxious, there’s no water and they spend all night in the streets with their children, because it’s freezing cold.

Kyrychenko’s brother, mother, grandmothers, and father-in-law remain in Kyiv, and are unable leave. For now, she said that she would stay in Bucharest but may move to Lisbon where her employer maintains an office.

“We worry about our husbands, brothers and any other men living here,” she stated. Life in Kyiv was simple and pleasant before. We can speak whatever we like, do what we please, everything is possible. Kyiv, a beautiful and very ancient city is being destroyed by the terrorists. “We don’t know where to go.”