"We saw a rocket flying just above us... just above our car."

A Ukrainian woman based in Cork has described her attempts to flee Kyiv over the past week, detailing some notable eye-witness accounts of conflict along the way. Speaking on The Neil Prendeville Show on Red FM on Monday (28 February), the woman by the name of Vika, who has a business in Ballincollig, described how she has been in transit for five days straight, driving to the border in Poland since the conflict began last Thursday. "We're sleeping in the car, eating in the car, basically living in the car for these five days," she explained. "Two women and an 11-year-old boy," she continued, adding that thousands of cars are on the road, with drivers instructed to avoid major roads and to take smaller rural roads to try and avoid military action. As of Monday morning, Vika is in a lengthy queue of traffic as they inch closer to the Polish border. Asked if she came across specific instances of conflict during her journey thus far, Vika said she saw explosions at military caches and checkpoints. "They want to destroy all the guns and weapons that the Ukrainian army has – they just want people not to have any weapons," she said. "We saw a rocket flying just above us – I didn't understand what it was. "I took a video, but it was only a small flash; the rocket itself flew [past] in one second, just above our car. "I never saw anything like this [before]. It was horrible. It's like in movies or video games." Vika noted that the backlog of cars is mostly populated by women and children. "Actually, there are a good few men here but they are saying that they will just drive women and children to the border and then they are going back," she explained. Asked to sum up the mood on the ground, Vika said: "The first few days we were very afraid, now we are very tired. I think our brains are already paused. It's kind of some flight mode – I don't understand what's going on anymore. "I feel very sorry [for our country]. Russians are saying they came to free our country, that they want to save it, that we're kind of slaves, that we are imprisoned – but it's not true. "Ukraine is a free country. Nobody needs any help. We're okay. Our president is really surprising everyone. People were thinking he would run away but he is fighting. "He is not sleeping. He has guns. He has weapons. He is fighting on the streets. Every single Ukrainian man – I have friends who left their businesses, they took guns and they have gone in to protect their country."