Yaroslawa, 78, was asleep in her apartment in Kyiv around 4am on Saturday when a Russian missile struck, her daughter Tetiana said from Lviv.

“She said there was like a loud boom that shook the whole house,” said Tetiana, 52, who was in Lviv while trying to escape to Poland with her daughter Anna, 26.

Tetiana said they had tried for hours overnight to reach her mother but had not been able to because she had taken refuge in a bomb shelter. It was not until later in the morning, when her mother went to see what had become of her apartment, that the two were able to speak.

The grandmother described a terrifying night: After the explosion, she was rushed to a nearby school gym. An older woman died there of a heart attack, Tatiana said.

Yaroslawa doesn’t plan to leave, though. “The old people — they do not want to leave their homes,” Tetiana said.

Anna, her daughter, lived in Warsaw for six years and has spoken to friends in Poland who said that volunteers there could help them if they were able to make it across. But that will be a challenge.

People are reporting lines of cars that stretch for miles. Men of fighting age are not allowed to leave the country, so few drivers are willing to take the risk of approaching the area. It is largely women and children who, at the moment, have a chance to make it to Poland.

Chechen troops

Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Saturday that Chechen fighters had been deployed to Ukraine and urged Ukrainians to overthrow their government.

In a video posted online, Kadyrov boasted that Chechen units had so far suffered no losses and said Russian forces could easily take large Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, but that their task was to avoid loss of life. “As of today, as of this minute, we do not have one single casualty, or wounded, not a single man has even had a runny nose,” Kadyrov said. Reuters, denying what he said were false reports of casualties from Ukrainian sources.

“The President (Putin) took the right decision and we will carry out his orders under any circumstances,” said Kadyrov. He has often described himself as Putin’s “foot soldier”.