TERRIFYING

‘Surreal’ Footage Shows Ukrainians Flooding Kharkiv Subway to Avoid Airstrikes

A flood of families packed the station, train platforms, and darkened subway cars in Ukraine’s second-largest city.

Hundreds of people, including families and their pets, flocked to a subway station in Ukraine’s second-largest city on Thursday to seek shelter from Russia’s full-scale invasion. The scene in the Kharkiv metro, according to CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward, was “absolutely surreal.” Students, kids, and elderly people could be seen as Ward moved through the crowd. The day before, the space would have been full of commuters, she said. “We heard a series of thuds, and saw people start to pour in here,” she said, adding, “These people are frightened. They’re confused. They are desperately uncertain about what they’re supposed to do, how long they can take shelter here, where they go from here.” Footage captured by journalists with the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post showed people huddled on a train platform and in darkened subway cars. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov earlier announced that the subway was “the safest place” to shelter from possible airstrikes and encroaching tanks. “We try to be brave because we have children and we don’t want to show them that we are scared,” one Ukrainian mother told Ward.