Law students and young lawyers in Ukraine are filing for JURIST on the latest developments in that country as it defends itself against Russian invasion. Here, Justin Esiobu, a law student at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, who recently left Kharkiv and is now in western Ukraine, talks about the circumstances of his departure and his immediate plans.

Together with the whole of Kharkiv, I woke up to war at 5 o’clock in the morning of February 24. But excluding some power outages and having to live in a basement or a completely enclosed hallway / bathroom of your own apartment, as well as dealing with literally kilometer-long queues for supermarkets to get water, bread and all other products, everything was more or less tolerable until March 1. Then the Internet was completely turned off and mobile communications were increasingly jammed. After living for several days in complete isolation from the world and in complete darkness in the evening and at night (no one could open the curtains or turn on the lights), we spontaneously decided on Friday, March 4, somewhat in desperation, to take as many things as possible and abandon the rest. So we headed to the train station to try and get out of the city.

After spending a little more than 24 hours in the station, during which time it was hit with several rocket attacks, we got on a train to Ternopil [a city in western Ukraine]. There weren’t enough seats, however, so we rode 19 hours in a row on the deck of the car with many women, children and some men, standing and lying on the frosty floor, where it was about 5-10 degrees. When the train stopped and opened its doors the temperature inside dropped to 0. After about 55 hours without any decent sleep, we drove on to Khmelnytsky, where we were picked up by a family friend. That’s where we are now. We hope to go on to Lviv in the next few days.

Update: CNN reported on Justin’s journey west in this report.