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Manny Marotta, 25, of Pittsburgh, decided to fly to Ukraine and experience what impending war is really like.
Marotta traveled to Ukraine in early February planning to stay for at least 30 days but in less than two weeks he was forced to flee for his life along with thousands of others after he was awoken by air raid sirens on Feb. 24, he said in a TikTok video.
The 2019 University of Pittsburgh graduate, attempted to leave but like everyone else in the country, he quickly realized that all major transportation was closed.
That’s when he decided to walk from Lviv in western Ukraine, to Poland.
Along the way he saw “hundreds of thousands of people” getting out of cars that ran out of gas, taking all of their belongings, and walking to Poland, he said in the TikTok.
He walked with thousands of people without proper clothing for the winter weather, food, or water in the dark, carrying everything they could while Russia was bombing the country.
Less than 10 miles from the border the group was stopped by Ukrainian soldiers who were there to tell the group of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's conscription notice for all Ukrainian men ages 18 to 60.
After the men left the group they pressed onward to a gate where people were allowed in groups of 10 every 20 minutes, Marotta says in the video. But eventually, he made it to Medyka, Poland.
We’d say Marotta succeeded and his mission to launch his journalism career. He has now appeared on dozens of news outlets around the world sharing about what he saw in five languages, English, Russian, German, Italian, and French.
He now describes himself as “the first western journalist walking with the refugee caravan from Lviv, Ukraine during the Russian invasion.”
He is now back in the US, which is impressive since he apparently did all of this without a US passport.
He already has shared plans to continue his journalistic endeavors covering.
He is now reporting independently on the Ukraine situation via a Twitter account known as Ukraine Conflict Live 2022, which has already garnered over 88 thousand followers.
You can follow his coverage of the conflict here.
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