KYIV, Ukraine — For Rima Yaremenko, the 5,000-kilometer (3,000-mile) odyssey to escape Russian occupation ended within sight of where it started. The 68-year old Ukrainian woman traversed three countries over six days only to settle across the river from her beleaguered hometown.
She came a long way by bus through Russia, Latvia and Poland to be this close. From the Ukrainian-controlled city of Kherson, where she now lives, the faint outline of Oleshky is visible from a distance. But the community with a prewar population of 25,000 may as well be a world away.
Yaremenko lived under Moscow’s rule for 15 months, putting up with the rumble of constant shelling just be near her beloved home and blooming garden. Then it was gone after the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June triggered catastrophic flooding and reduced the property to clay.
She faced a tough choice: Endure homelessness as the war raged nearby or take the only way out — a long, circuitous and uncertain journey through Russia. “We didn’t want to go, but once we were flooded, I decided there’s nothing to stay for,” she said.
Hundreds of others left too, abandoning their water-logged homes to travel across vast sweeps of occupied land, past checkpoints that required nail-biting interrogations and through Russia’s urban heartland, all to reach the borders of the European Union.
Now that they are beyond the reach of Russian authorities, the escapees offered rare firsthand accounts to The Associated Press of their lives under occupation and their harrowing escape from Kremlin-controlled territory. Some of them spoke on the condition that they be identified only by their first names because they still have relatives living in occupied territory.
As the two sides blamed each other for destroying the dam, water levels declined and thunderous artillery fire resumed. Fighting intensified along the Dnieper River, which marks the line between Kyiv and Moscow’s battling armies. Russian allegations that…
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