‘I felt euphoria’: Ukraine’s borderland refugees praise incursion into Russia

While thousands have had to flee their homes, there is widespread feeling that the attack is a justified form of defence

Last Tuesday, Oksana and her family could not escape fast enough. Though they did not know it, Ukrainian regular forces had entered Russia for the first time, and Moscow's military wasted little time in hitting back, bombing their village around seven miles from the border.

It was 9am and the first glide bomb hit the village," she said, and its ferocity - very scary, much bigger" than ordinary shelling - was such that they immediately knew they had to escape. Our neighbour drove his children first and then came back and picked me and my sister and family," the mother of two explained.