Italian rescues mother-in-law and dozens of relatives from Ukraine

euronews.com:

It was a blunt and desperate message from his mother-in-law in Ukraine that convinced Alberto, 58, he had to act quickly.

"I am already dead," she told him on the phone from Kharkiv. "I don’t understand why you insist on calling me. Don’t call me anymore."

Alberto, an Italian living in Vienna with his Ukrainian wife Svetlana, said from that moment she stopped picking up the phone.

“I went to rescue my wife’s family from a tomb,” the former policeman told Euronews. “I told [myself] that if we don’t go there to get them, we will never see them again.”

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-biggest city and near the border with Russia, was one of the first areas to come under bombardment.

It is also among the cities hardest hit.

The regional emergency service said on Wednesday that at least 500 residents of the city have been killed since the start of Russia's invasion on 24 February.

Barely days into the conflict, civilian areas were already being targeted.

Its residents were spending days trapped inside bunkers, lacking immediate access to food, water and medical provisions.

“The bomb shelter wasn’t really a bunker, but like a cellar,” Svetlana’s cousin, Alina, told Euronews. “There were 50-70 people inside, and we didn’t have electricity or signal. The shops were closed most of the day, so getting bread was a problem. We could feel the walls shaking.”

The situation left Alberto and Svetlana deeply perturbed, especially as their relatives’ phone signals grew patchier.

Then, on 2 March, after his mother-in-law's blunt message, communications stopped and Alberto felt propelled to intervene.

Alberto, brought a team together of around 100 friends and colleagues, who helped him carefully plan his journey from Vienna to Ukraine.

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