KUALA LUMPUR: One of the few Malaysians who chose to remain in Ukraine following the evacuation of Malaysian embassy staff and others has now left for neighbouring Moldova as the war worsens.

       Software engineer K. Karuna made his escape from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, where he has stayed for the last five years.

       He had been living contentedly in an apartment with his girlfriend and enjoying life in the city until the Russian invasion.

       “We lived on the sixth floor of an apartment building, but it is next to a police station, which we feared could be a target,” he said in a webcast interview with prominent journalist Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai on Friday night (March 11).

       Karuna, 28, from Nilai in Negri Sembilan, said the Odessa city centre was deserted as most people had fled to neighbouring countries or the countryside.

       Odessa is located on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine where the people are mostly Russian-speaking.

       It is the third most populous city in Ukraine.

       Moldova is a small former Soviet republic bordering Romania.

       “We decided to leave for a safer place with the war tensions. It took us about three hours to reach the border,” he said, adding that most people would only venture out to restock their water and food supplies.

       Karuna said because he was a foreigner, he had to wait for two hours for passport clearance, which caused him anxiety “as they took away my passport.”

       He said in Odessa, sirens go off regularly and explosions and gunshots could be heard all the time.

       Karuna said heavily-armed police patrolled the streets and enforced a strict curfew where anyone out after 7pm would be considered enemy saboteurs.

       He said they had held on even after others left with the hope that both sides would come to an agreement.

       Asked if he believed that the Russians would invade Ukraine when speculation was rife in the media more than a month before the war, Karuna said he thought it would be just some form of hostilities, and even felt it was just “Western media hysterics” at that point.

       He said he kept abreast of news from Ukrainian and Russian media but the most accurate reports were through calls from friends “where you can hear the sound of explosions in the background".

       He said incredibly, the phone lines and WiFi continued working, so he could keep in touch with his family in Malaysia.