Zhanna Dmytrivna Zabrodska, 85, from Kharkiv, spent 11 days in a cold basement before making the journey to Kroscienko on the Polish-Ukraine border along with her cat, Masha and her daughter Veronica Zabrodska
(Picture: Lucy Young)Eighty-seven year-old Tetyana Vatazhok leaned heavily on her crutches and set her face defiantly against the freezing cold as snow fell all around her. She gazed out in silence as her younger friend, 85-year-old Zhanna Zabrodska, sat immobilised in a wheelchair alongside. Zhanna clutched a rucksack on her lap from which her cat Masha peaked out. “Come feel my bag,” she said. “Come and feel Masha shivering through the bag”. Tears streamed down Zhanna’s cheeks.
“This is too much,” Zhanna said. “As a child, I lived through the Second World War. And now we have this.” She gestured to the queue of refugees full of exhausted mothers and children who had made it here to Kroscienko on the Polish side of the border crossing - and were waiting for transit to a reception centre where warmth and hot food awaited them. “The Russians are same as the Germans. I see them as Gestapo,” she said.
