Former Miss Ukraine Describes Her Journey With 7-Year-Old Son To Escape War

Former Miss Ukraine Veronika Didusenko, who fled the country along with her 7-year-old son, opened up about the horrific journey she undertook to escape the war in her homeland.

After the perilous journey, the 26-year-old reached Los Angeles and urged the U.S. to "close the sky" over Ukraine to help put an end to the Russian invasion, which she described as "terrorism," NY Post reported.

Didusenko, who is from Kyiv, said the national capital was asleep without any formal declaration of war when they were hit by the enemy bomb on the morning of Feb. 24. "My 7-year-old son and I were awakened by sirens and explosions,'' Didusenko said, as reported by NBC Los Angeles.

Along with tens of thousands of families in Kyiv, Didusenko fled the city with her child as dozens of Russian helicopters circled the city's skies. "As I was fleeing with my young son, I could see there was a real air battle above our heads," Didusenko said.

"On my journey to the border of Ukraine, there was no place where sirens would not sound, where rockets and bombs would not explode," she described the ordeal.

After crossing the Ukrainian border, Didusenko traveled through four countries, Moldova, Romania, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, to reach her friends. Since Didusenko already had a visa to the U.S., she could travel to Los Angeles but had to leave her son with her friends in Switzerland as his visa got rejected. Didusenko said she plans to return to Switzerland later this week.

"People are dying in shelters with no food, no water, no light, no warmth. It is a tragedy. It is terrorism," the mother said.

Didusenko said there were still many children and mothers trying to get to the border and feared that Putin would not stop the war until the "eradication of everything Ukrainian and Ukraine itself."

Didusenko was accompanied by women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred when she appeared for the news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Allred said the U.S. should be issuing Ukrainians "humanitarian parole," allowing them to enter and stay in the country without a visa, considering the current humanitarian crisis in the country.

"Today I urge President Biden to immediately announce that he will give Ukrainians the opportunity to come to the United States if they so choose," Allred added.

Although Didusenko was crowned Miss Ukraine in 2018, she was stripped of the title later when the organizers realized that she was divorced and had a child, citing she went against the rules of the beauty pageant.