Even on two occasions they failed in their attempt to flee from Jershon.

The bombs of the Russian army on this city in the Ukrainian region of Donbas, especially hit by the invasion ordered by Vladimir Putin, repeatedly prevented their evacuation.

But finally, 49 days after the war broke out, the Spaniard Eugenio Pérez, 54, and his wife Svetlana, a Ukrainian national, managed to leave the horror behind on Tuesday with their 13-year-old son Valeriv. .

"I'm quite low in the mood to talk," Pérez warned the phone with an exhausted voice after stepping on Poland.

The family was on the outskirts of Kherson, a Ukrainian city that was attacked by Russia from the first week of war.

At that time, the Foreign Ministry had registered some 300 Spaniards in Ukraine.

The Embassy chartered two convoys from kyiv to evacuate nationals who wanted to leave the country, on February 25 and 26.

But you had to get to the capital.

And not everyone could join the expeditions, or did not want to do so at first.

A hundred left in the convoys.

Those who remained on Ukrainian soil have had to fend for themselves to get to the border.

According to sources from the Foreign Ministry, the economic cost and the enormous risk to human lives of a rescue within the country made an evacuation by the Government unfeasible, which had previously asked compatriots to leave Ukraine in the face of the Kremlin threat.

For Pérez, his partner and his son, leaving Donbás, besieged by attacks, has been very complicated.

Added to the fear of these weeks as direct spectators of the war in one of the hot spots of the conflict is the difficult journey from Kherson to Poland.

"They are very touched," says Carlos Fernández.

Asturian and a 50-year-old consultant, Fernández lived in Ukraine until the beginning of February, a few days before the invasion.

And, since then and in his house in Oviedo, his efforts have focused on contacting and helping other Spaniards and Ukrainians who wanted to leave the country.

Fernández worked as an intermediary between companies, so he has a wide network of contacts that from the field has facilitated the flight of some 50 compatriots and another 400 Ukrainians in the last month.

Pérez and his family are the last he has helped.

“Eugenio is very annoyed.

They were in the Russian zone.

They will have seen everything ”, adds the Asturian.

Together with another Spaniard, Javier Fernández, from Madrid, also a consultant, they launched the Help to Ukraine association, from which they channel assistance.

road, train and bus

On Monday, Fernández sent a car to Jersón to rescue Pérez and his family, but the fighting forced them to turn back.

“We can no longer stand this situation.

This is hell.

We are running out of food,” Pérez wrote in a WhatsApp message after the failed attempt.

The man assures that he has lost eight kilos of weight by living with "a knot in the stomach".

But, fortunately, they had better luck a day later when the vehicle finally managed to avoid the attacks.

They arrived in Odessa, in the south, around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

They covered sections that are normally completed in 40 minutes in about four hours.

Once there, at 9:30 p.m., they took a train to Lviv, near the Polish border, from where thousands of refugees stop before leaving their country, and where they arrived on Wednesday morning.

The last section, to Krakow, was completed by bus.

They spent the night in that city and, on Thursday, another Help to Ukraine volunteer took them by car to Warsaw, where the Spanish consul José Lozano was waiting for them.

David López (second from the left) before leaving Gostomel.

The arduous flight of the family of Eugenio Pérez is the last exit of Spaniards that is expected for now.

In recent days, another ten have also escaped by their means and with the help of Help to Ukraine.

Among them, David López, 38, who spent several days in a basement in Gostomel.

And he ran away about 10 days ago.

"Some Ukrainian soldiers came to free me at the house where he was," he explains by phone.

They left him in kyiv and then he left by train.

According to Foreign Affairs, they have maintained constant contact with those who wanted to flee during this month and a half.

The dozen nationals who are still in Ukraine have decided to stay, explains Fernández.

Most by personal roots, and several have dual nationality.

There are a few more who might change their minds.

Eugenio, his son and his wife will travel to Spain by plane from Warsaw after escaping the hell of war.

Two Spaniards help the rest

Both Carlos and Javier have invested more than 15,000 euros of their own money to help other Spaniards and Ukrainians through Help to Ukraine to leave Ukraine, as well as spending their time finding ways to help them while they continue to work at their jobs.

Car trips, hotel nights or plane tickets have been some of the expenses that they have had to defray so that other compatriots and Ukrainians could escape the horror of war, such as the family of Eugenio Pérez or David López.

One of the problems they have faced is the difficulty in finding protective vests.

The militia told them that they could not rescue more people without these vests to flee the attacks and, according to their account, neither the Ministry of Defense nor Foreign Affairs have provided them.

Only one retired soldier has loaned them one of these vests.

Now they remain concerned for those who continue to face the horror of the attacks, and persist in their efforts to help Ukrainians who want to escape.

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