A place like a museum: View of Dragobrat in the Carpathians.
Bild: picture alliance / Zoonar
Until the very end, the people of Ukraine hoped that the war could still be averted – and so did our author. A report from an idyllic ski resort in the Carpathians, which suddenly belongs to the front.
Nfter a day in the white swirling snowstorm and another twenty centimeters of fresh snow, the last clouds clear towards the end of the night. The morning sun squints over the ridge, soon beaming down on the mountain village of Dragobrat in the Carpathians. You could go skiing now. In the evening you could go to one of the small bars where they have been partying for the past few days as if there were neither Corona nor Putin. They had hoped to the last that things wouldn’t get that bad, and when we arrived here earlier in the week, the world looked so white and paradisiacal that one could almost forget what was threatening in the east of the country. It turned out worse than they feared.
In the night from Wednesday to Thursday it had snowed again, again there is a thick new, glittering white layer on the streets, houses, trees. But in the morning at 5.49 a.m. we received the news that Russian troops are attacking Ukraine – not only in the east, but also in Kiev and other cities. We are more than 1,200 kilometers from the front lines, but it is now said that targets that are only 100 kilometers from us are also being shelled. We pack our things and meet at the reception. All flights have been cancelled; now a bus is supposed to take us across the border to Romania.