Falling in love with a Ukrainian through a dating site, Alain Mireault chose a very bad time to go visit her.
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Interviewed on the show Denis Levesque, Mr. Mireault nevertheless admits to being someone who follows the news a lot. He was therefore aware of the tensions that there were already between Russia and Ukraine when he visited his girlfriend, in Lviv, in the west of the country.
But as Alain Mireault himself likes to say: “love is stronger than war”. The latter therefore ignored the threat of an armed conflict to go to Ukraine as he had planned.
“I arrived in Lviv in Ukraine on Sunday February 13 and my girlfriend came to join me on Monday February 14,” says Alain Mireault, noting in passing that he had to overcome several challenges before being able to take his flight from Toronto. .
In this tourist city of Ukraine, he admits to having spent very beautiful moments in the presence of his companion. He explains in particular that he ate at the restaurant and met the children of his girlfriend.
On February 17, Mr. Mireault and his girlfriend headed for the Carpathians, a mountain range where they were able to go downhill skiing.
But as of February 21, as he felt that the tension was mounting and that war was in danger of breaking out, Alain Mireault contacted his airline to request that his return flight be brought forward.
Finally, he made the decision not to change his date of return to Canada.
“I didn’t want to leave her (…) so I decided to stay with her, then we had a great vacation there,” he says.
He stayed there until February 23, when he returned to Lviv by coach with his lover.
On February 24 at 7am, while he and his girlfriend were sleeping in their hotel room, the phone rang.
“We have like a sixth sense, I knew something was urgent,” says Mr. Mireault, who was listening to a telephone conversation in Ukrainian, which he understands very little.
At the end of the line, his partner’s mother told them that Kyiv and Kharkiv had been attacked by Russian forces.
“You wake up and the country where you are is being bombed, the war has started,” he says.
So he decided to leave the country and go to Poland. He went outside to wait for a taxi.
As he waited, a war siren sounded.
“The war siren when we watch war movies, everyone has already heard this siren. But when you’re here for the first time in your life, my heart has never raced so fast!” he says.
Alone on the sidewalk for a few minutes while his friend went to pick up her daughter who was sleeping in the hotel room, several scenarios crossed his mind.
“I was sure to get shot!” he exclaims.
Once in the taxi, he claims to have been delayed in traffic jams.
He also explains that he waited hours to obtain a negative COVID test to board a bus. He even elbowed his way in, under the gaze of his better half, whom he had to leave in a hurry.
“We weren’t in a movie,” he says of his goodbyes.
Then he was forced to wait another three hours at the border. In all, it took 13 hours for Alain Mireault to arrive in Poland, where he is still.
To see the full interview, watch the video above.
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