Former Dynamo midfielder Carlos de Pena told how, along with other legionnaires, he left Ukraine after the start of a full-scale Russian invasion.
“On Wednesday, February 23, the club president assured the team, especially foreigners, that the situation in the capital was under control. That nothing will happen, that he even spoke with the president of the country, so we can be calm, because nothing will happen. But to be honest, I didn't think so.
I remember waking up at 4 am to the sound of two planes over my house. Then there was the sound of an explosion, but I don’t know if it was close to me or far away, but I felt it.
I immediately met with my Brazilian teammates, because we lived in the same area, even with some of the Shakhtar players, and went to one of the hotels in the city.
We spent three nights in an underground apartment, a kind of bunker, with uncertainty, with fear, not knowing what would happen, and trying to convey peace of mind to our families when we ourselves did not have it. But, fortunately, today I can tell about it as an anecdote.
We contacted embassies that offered us options for leaving, but we had a group of 50 people with children, so the process itself was not so simple.
A train was coming from the station, which was 15 minutes away from us. He was heading towards the border of Poland, Romania, and then Moldova. After spending 17 hours on this train, we never got to the border of Poland because of the large number of people, it was unrealistic to get through.
We decided to drive to the border with Moldova, where a bus from the Football Federation of Ukraine was waiting for us. After 4 hours, already in Moldova, we calmed down a bit. Perhaps only there did we begin to feel that we were really returning home, ”said de Pena.