‘If you go on the train, you may die’: ice hockey player’s terrifying escape from Ukraine

A Canadian-Israeli ice hockey player has described his harrowing escape from Ukraine, as foreign athletes in both Ukraine and Russia face life-threatening decisions over whether to stay or go.

Eliezer Sherbatov was with his team, HC Mariupol of the Ukrainian Hockey League, in the Donetsk region last week preparing for a game against Kramatorsk when a bomb exploded outside their hotel.

“At 5am, I’m sleeping and hear: ‘Boom!’ You never hear that strong of a sound,” Sherbatov told TSN. “And it starts shaking, everything is shaking. So, a couple of metres away, the war started.”

Sherbatov said the team’s coach called a meeting at breakfast, where he explained: “Guys - the war has started. It’s unfortunate, but I would suggest you to stay put as a team. But if you choose to leave, it’s your decision.’”

Sherbatov said he and the team’s other European-Canadian eventually decided to go the local train station in Druzhkiva. The train to Lviv, however, was two days late.

“We received a call that the trains are getting shot as of now. So, the third guy that was supposed to come with us, he tells me, ‘I’m not going because I don’t want to die.’ It’s a 50-50 … chance. That’s what they said. That’s a 50-50 chance, [if] you go on the train, you [may] die. Tell me, what would you do? What decision would you take? You stay, you go to a bomb shelter, and you hope that a person doesn’t put a grenade inside the bomb shelter … Or you take the train and have a 50-50 chance at survival.”

After speaking to his father and putting his trust in God, Sherbatov said, he decided to board the train. It travelled north-west through Kramatorsk and Kharkiv then west through Kyiv, all of which are under heavy assault by the Russian military.

“Imagine how