Heartbreaking pics show Ukrainians hiding under destroyed bridge from Russian airstrikes as 1.5million on run from Putin
HEARTBREAKING pictures have shown Ukrainians hiding under a destroyed bridge as they escape Russian airstrikes.
Hundreds of residents from Irpin on Kyiv's outskirts piled together under a blown-up bridge for protection.
It comes as Russian bombings of Kyiv and its surrounding towns intensify after they failed to capture to the capital in last week's shock invasion.
People fleeing from Irpin and Bucha said their resolve to stay broke when Russian warplanes started circling overhead and dropping bombs on Friday.
"Warplanes. They are bombing residential areas -- schools, churches, big buildings, everything," accountant Natalia Dydenko said after a quick glance back at the destruction she left behind.
The 58-year-old was one of thousands of people walking with their children and whatever belongings they could carry down a road leading toward central Kyiv and away from the front.
"It began two days ago. It wasn't as heavy before, but two days ago it started getting really heavy," Natalia said.
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People have been trying to get to the remains of a bridge leading to Kyiv over the Irpin River which Ukrainian forces blew up last week to stall the Russian advance.
Ukrainian soldiers with assault rifles swinging off their shoulders have helped wheelchair-bound pensioners and mothers with prams cross a few wooden planks tossed over the river on Saturday.
Thousands of people massed in stony silence under the shattered remains of the original concrete bridge while awaiting their turn to pass.
A group of soldiers was digging anti-tank missile launchers into foxholes on the Kyiv side of the river.
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Another group was preparing new supplies of shoulder-launched missiles and Kalashnikovs that could be ferried back across the wooden planks toward the front.
Galina Vasylchenko decided to flee when Russian fighters bombed her home.
"We were waiting it out. But yesterday, when a plane flew by and dropped something on us, we simply had to run," she said.
Russian warplanes have struck and killed dozens in the central town of Chernihiv and the eastern city of Kharkiv in the past week.
Now analysts fear Kyiv's heritage - as well as a plethora of churches that answer to the Moscow patriarchate - could be razed by Russian jets.
The town of Bucha had witnessed the first fighting and parts of the area are now all but cleared to the ground.
That same level of violence is now raining down on Irpin.
A supermarket and petrol station were destroyed on Friday while soldiers ushered residents on buses out of the town.
Thousands more piled their belongings into cars and tried to get out of Irpin but were hit by a queue of cars three miles long.
It comes as 1.45 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began ten days ago, according to the U.N.-affiliated Organization for Migration in Geneva.
It predicted the total number of refugees could swell to 4 million, to become the biggest such crisis this century.
Most have arrived in Poland and other neighbouring European Union countries, with the bloc granting people fleeing Ukraine temporary protection and residency permits.
Some are starting to make their way to countries further afield.
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More than 100,000 have reached Slovakia, with many planning to continue to Czech Republic.
Hundreds arrive daily by train in the German capital, Berlin and further away in Italy, 10,000 refugees have arrived, 40 percent of them children.
