04:28
After some weeks reporting in Ukraine, I crossed the Ukraine-Romania border at Siret yesterday, along with thousands of Ukrainian women and children getting out. Like at many land borders, there were huge queues of cars waiting to cross, and the line for pedestrians was more than six hours, quite gruelling given the sub-zero temperatures and swirling snow flurries. This was entirely down to the slow processing of exits on the Ukrainian side.
On the Romanian side, there was a really impressive welcome, with dozens of volunteers on hand speaking English, Russian or Ukrainian, hot drinks, food, and buses to Suceava, the nearest city. From there, all travel on Romanian trains is free. When I flew out of the city of Iasi today, the airport was packed with Ukrainian refugees, and here too there were information stands, free food and volunteers on hand to help refugees.
Updated
04:02
Councillors at Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown county council in Dublin last night voted to change the address of the Russian embassy from Orwell Road to Independent Ukraine Road, a move that will now go out to consultation with residents.
The motion was proposed by Labour councillor Peter O’Brien, who said he was inspired by Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Albania, where similar changes, in solidarity with Ukraine, have taken place.
The embassy has been the scene of several incidents since war broke out. Earlier this week a man was charged with criminal damage after crashing his truck into the embassy gates, while a priest was last week told he would also be summonsed after dousing the gates with red paint. He said he would be “delighted” to be charged as his defence would be “provocation” by Putin.
Updated
03:43
The head of Ukraine’s embassy in Australia says he cannot remain “diplomatically polite” when his parents spend their nights in a bomb shelter in Kyiv, and has called for the Russian ambassador to be expelled.
Volodymyr Shalkivskyi issued the plea to the Australian government as he spoke about how his parents, aged in their 70s, had rebuffed suggestions to flee Ukraine’s capital and were now asking for molotov cocktail recipes.
“They’re making sandwiches [for] our military and they spend the nights in bomb shelters,” Shalkivskyi, the chargé d’affaires at Ukraine’s embassy in Australia, said on Thursday.
“As my father told me, two nights in a bomb shelter is enough to completely change any pro-Russian sentiment that you have in your heart.”
Shalkivskyi also relayed a message he had received from his mother, 73, after she looked out from the balcony on the seventh floor of her apartment building in northern Kyiv.
“‘I think it’s a good position. Can you send me a recipe of molotov cocktail?’”
