Displaced Ukrainian Refugees

"It's all families and children here. People are standing in the queue [to the border] with their cars for five or six days. They need to eat and drink. There are probably 2,400 people in this line right now."

"In the western parts [of Ukraine], it's easier because it's safe here, but it's still very stressful. We sleep in warm beds, with food, without bombs, while in the eastern parts of the country, other Ukrainians are being killed. I could not stay home and do nothing."

"I have friends from eastern Ukraine who don't know when they can come home, or if they even have homes anymore. I watched a lot of videos yesterday where people were killed trying to leave. They are just driving in a car, and Russian soldiers shoot them. These are very real stories, and they're so sad."

"We [Ukrainians] feel he [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy] is not a man from politics, because he is not speaking like every president before [him]. We can feel this spirit, that [Zelenskyy] is one of us, and that he supports our nation. It's incredible that he stays in Kyiv, and I am sure that he will lead us to victory."

Olya Kruviy, 24, volunteer with aid organization Caritas

 

"Our school wasn't notifying us about anything unusual that was happening. Then on the 24th, around 4 a.m., we heard the air sirens, and we knew something bad was happening. That's when we saw that Russia has bombed Kyiv, and that the war has started."

"Because our country is in a crazy zone on its own, we are trying to get to Poland. When we get there we will try and find an opportunity to get to another European country, maybe that would be better for us."

Takudzwa, 32, Zimbabwean student of civil engineering, Ternopil

 

"We stayed [in Kyiv] for two or three days, but the bombings were just too much. We arrived here three days ago, but we can't cross.

"The Ukrainians all have a place to stay, and once they get to the border, they go through right away. We have it different. We managed to find a building to sleep inside, at least, but it's a few hundred of us in there."

"Over the past three days, I've been through things that I never thought I would go through. Especially in this century, and in Europe! [This war is] not something that we should tolerate, at all."

Maclean, 25-yr-old Ghanian medical student

Ukrainians waiting in a queue of cars to cross the border into Poland

 

According to the United Nations, well over a million Ukrainian citizens have fled in desperation to escape Russian bombardment of Ukraine's towns and cities. They head toward their country's borders with its neighbours with the intention of seeking haven from the war forced upon Ukraine by Russia.  Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia, and Romania have all opened their borders to their fleeing Ukrainian neighbours, pledging to provide humanitarian support.

Ukrainian refugees at the train station in Przemysl, Poland

None have any desire to extend their hospitality to non-Ukrainians fleeing the war. African men, for example, in Ukraine on study visas or passing through -- with the intention of eventually finding their way to more prosperous west-European countries -- whom the conflict has caught up in its web. Leading them to emulate native Ukrainians in an effort to distance themselves from the war. 

 

Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are held back from the border and refused entry to Poland, for example. They are expected to join the struggle by their compatriots against the violent Russian invasion.

 

That expectation may extend to any non-Ukrainian males of fighting age who have been living in Ukraine. Those who have migrated from their countries of origin to advance their education while removing themselves from conflict at home and moving closer to the ultimate destination; life somewhere in Europe.

Ukrainian citizens arrive at a border control checkpoint between Poland and Ukraine

At the Poland-Ukraine border a waiting line of family vehicles stretches for ten kilometres, with families waiting their turn to be checked through to cross into Poland. Trying to keep warm in the winter atmosphere with makeshift fires where volunteer aid workers distribute food to people camped for days in their vehicles. The number of refugees fleeing the Russian bombardments is expected to rise in Ukraine's 44-million population as major cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv remain under siege.

 

For the most part, women and children make up the fleeing demographic. The aid organization Caritas distributes food, water and blankets to people passing by a gas station five kilometres from the border, where they have established an aid post. The Russian military's indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas in towns and cities mostly in the northeast of the vast country has not only terrorized the population, it has enraged many as well, stiffening their resolve to remain and to actively oppose the Russian invasion, however they can.

 

Ukrainians, once they reach the border and are permitted to cross, are assured of rescue for the time being. Other civilians representing migrants from Africa, India and the Middle East who have been working or studying in Ukraine face blocks to their entry into countries that had refused to accept migrants in one wave after another over the past decade, of people trying to escape poverty or criminal gangs or civil wars, or sectarian violence in this own dysfunctional countries of origin.