NIGHTMARE ALLEY

A couple, fleeing the shelling in Ukraine, are captured by Russian troops. It's up to their frantic son-living 2,400 km away-to get them free.

- Reuben F. Johnson

WHEN RUSSIAN SOLDIERS opened fire on our car, I thought we were dead. It was 4 March 2022, eight days into the invasion of Ukraine. My wife and I had hurriedly packed all our valuables that could fit in one suitcase and a couple of carry-ons.

We hired a driver, thinking we could make it to the train station in Irpin, a village outside of Kyiv that we had fled to after the war began. Nearly as soon as we pulled away from the rural farmhouse where we were staying, we ran into Russian armoured vehicles.

"Go back, go back!" my wife screamed. The driver frantically tried to reverse. It was too late. Russian infantrymen began spraying our Toyota Camry with automatic weapons fire and chasing after us. As I ducked behind the driver's seat, I could hear the glass shattering into a million pieces as the bullets struck the windows.

Somehow we managed to jump out of the moving car, hop over a fence and take cover behind a bright blue port-apotty. Our bullet-riddled Camry careened down an incline and smashed into a fence. It was a complete wreck.

"Come out from behind there!" yelled a Russian soldier. We stepped out from our hiding place, hands raised, explaining we were unarmed civilians on our way to a train station. The Russian soldiers approached and pointed rifles in our faces.

THE STORY OF Our capture started with a miscalculation. "There will not be a war." I heard that phrase over and over in Kyiv. My wife, Iryna Samsonenko, and I had been living in Ukraine for 21 years. I worked as a military affairs and Russian political analyst, and as a consultant to the aerospace industry. Putin threatening Ukraine was a movie we had seen many times, and I assumed the saber rattling was just that and nothing more.