Many thousands are now fleeing the city, leaving behind homes, families and jobs. Many have made it by train as far as the city of Lviv in the west of Ukraine, some to a makeshift refugee shelter in an old theatre on a cobbled street, where people can stay for a few days before they have to move on. Markevitch, 29, sat alone there on Tuesday, on a mattress on the stage. She was a stylist in Kharkiv, she said, until she sold her business last year to help fund her grandmother’s Covid care. As her son Pasha played, she turned over a necklace pendant her grandmother left her when she died.