A New Zealander living in Ukraine was forced to lock up his home and flee when the Russian bombs started falling last week. Kurt Bayer reports on an escape from hell.
The birds were silent. Ross Parton's house in the small Ukrainian city of Bucha, 20km from Kyiv, backs on to a wooded area. He enjoyed starting his day by listening to the birdsong with his morning coffee.
But on February 24, it was deathly quiet. Eerie.
Then the bombs started falling.
The 52-year-old, originally from Auckland, had until recent years been living in Sweden.
After catching Covid-19 early in the pandemic, he decided to grab a holiday in Ukraine. He enjoyed the country, its people, food and sights.
"It's an amazing place, very European," he says.
Parton returned home, only to suddenly find Sweden boring. He decided to relocate to Ukraine, able to run his leadership coaching business from "anywhere with Wi-Fi".
He got a place in Hostomel, a northwestern suburb of Kyiv near Antonov Airport, also known as Hostomel Airport. An international cargo airport, it was then unknown to most of the outside world.
The former Rainbows End operations manager enjoyed his new life, becoming a regular at his local gym, making friends with the locals, and later, moving into a house in Bucha. He raved about the west-looking country to his mother back in Auckland and told her about his new girlfriend.
But when Russian President Vladimir Putin started massing thousands of troops and military hardware on the Ukraine border earlier this year, Parton was concerned.
His new English-speaking Ukrainian friends, however, seemed nonplussed. Russia had constantly been posturing since 2014 and fighting had been ongoing over the status of Crimea and parts of the Donbas region, which are internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.
"It was just daily life for them, but I don't think they expected him to actually invade like he did," he said.
While Parton prepared a grab-bag, stocked up on food, and kept his car's fuel tank full, the locals remained relaxed.
It was only in the final hours before the full military invasion last month that they started panic-buying supplies, trying to get cash out of ATMs, and discussing potential escape routes west of Kyiv.
On the morning of February 24, Parton rose about 7am. Outside, he stared at the empty sky and wondered where the birds had gone.
Then he started hearing distant thudding.
"It was always two taps, like dom-dom. It was a weird noise. And then some more and I thought, that's army, something's not right," he says.
An aircraft went overhead - "within a couple of hundred metres of my house" - which startled Parton and moved him inside.
There was a jet and a helicopter, he says. Ukrainian ground troops manning an anti-aircraft battery nearby unleashed, firing skywards.
"I could see it firing into the air and thought, 'Oh f***, that's really close'."
The helicopter fired back at the anti-aircraft gun.
He then heard a whoosh of a missile, followed by an explosion at Hostomel Airport, 6km away.
"We thought it was a big explosion but it was actually a small explosion compared to when they hit it again at 12.30pm," Parton says.
Again, he was outside when those explosions rocked Hostomel. He felt an "incredible vibration" through the ground, followed by a blast through the air.
"We looked at each other and thought, 'S***, that's Hostomel Airport'," he says.
"It was a massive boom, like a vacuum. That was quite a wake-up call, it all became pretty real."
The decision to flee came quickly.
"I knew it was time to leave. It was too close."
His girlfriend decided to stay put and so Parton dropped her at her nearby parents, who were well-prepared and had a basement bunker.
He packed his late-model diesel turbo Hyundai i40 with his prepared supplies, including food, water, and clothing, along with mountain bikes and snowboard. Who knows how long he'd be gone.
Thinking ahead, he booked accommodation in Poland, turned off his water and electricity, locked up his house, and left.
It was 1pm.
Just down the road, across a barren patch of land "like the Desert Road", he passed the anti-aircraft gun. It was ablaze in a giant fireball and he knew there were dead Ukrainians inside it.
Parton drove a kilometre to the main road, the M07. Turning east, would have taken him to Kyiv: west, to Poland.
He headed west for the border, passing 500m-long queues at petrol stations and Ukrainian tanks, armoured vehicles and troops.
It took 30 minutes to travel 5km, but then the roads opened up and he could manage to drive at 80km/h.
He kept ringing his mother back in Auckland with progress updates. He spotted tanks hiding in forests, encountered checkpoints, and passed Kyiv-bound convoys of tanks.
"Probably a hundred tanks passed me. It was very surreal."
Once he was 250km away, he stopped seeing military activity and he finally began breathing easier.
He started replying to the dozens of Facebook messages from friends checking if he was okay.
At 9pm, he reached the Polish border. He'd crossed there many times before. It usually took a few minutes of perfunctory paper-checking.
But today, the queue to cross was 6km long and some 21 hours later, after a long night dozing in his car, he was finally allowed across, taking two English people with him.
No Ukrainian males of fighting age were allowed out. Children and families were prioritised.
A Kiwi friend phoned him from Italy and invited him to stay. Parton didn't need to be asked twice.
He drove across Poland, through Germany, Austria, and Switzerland before making it to his mate's place.
For the past few days, Parton has been in constant contact with friends back in Bucha.
His town has suffered some of the worst violence, with heavy fighting and shelling.
Videos taken from locals, seen by the Weekend Herald, show widespread destruction in his old neighbourhood, with bombed-out buildings, houses, smouldering tanks and bodies lying in the street.
A trainer at his gym says they were subjected to a 48-hour curfew while Russian tanks fired at buildings, shops, and apartments down Bucha's main street.
"The Russians are just trying to destroy everything," Parton says. "It's like they have been told to destroy Ukraine."
Another friend's house has been blown away. Some have guns and vowed to him that they would "fight for our country".
"They are really hard people," he says.
"There is not a lot that would stop them. They never give up."
Messages from friends still there via WhatsApp, Viber, and Telegram tell of the invaders being young, disorganised and dangerous.
Stories are circulating of Russian soldiers terrorising people, firing indiscriminately and striking fear into civilians.
Parton believes he fled at the right time. If he went eight hours later, once roads were bombed and fighting broke out further, he might've been stuck in the war zone.
His girlfriend now regrets not leaving with him.
Key bridges and exit points have been blown or blocked.
"I've heard quite a few nightmare stories of Ukrainians trying to get west, towards Poland and Romania," Parton says.
Parton is unsure how the war will unfold. He's hopeful that Russia will withdraw, now that it's clear that most of the world has condemned the military action.
But concerns remain that Putin's troops will roll straight from his neighbourhood into nearby Kyiv.
For now, Parton will bide his time and keep watching on from afar.
"I'm just going to see how it plays out," he says.
"If Russia just turns around and leaves or if they simply replace the government and in four to eight weeks it settles down, I might go back. Unfortunately, where I live it's pretty damaged but my house isn't and so I should be able to go straight back home.
"But I'm not an idiot – I'm not going to go back if it's dangerous or risky."
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