There is a gnawing fear in the back of their minds: Will we even have a home to return to? If there is one thing you need to know about the dilemma they face, it is that many have to make immediate decisions about their family future on their own. Recruitment rules in Ukraine mean that men between the ages of 18 and 60 are barred from leaving the country. And, in any case, many chose to register and participate in the race. Thus, while millions of Ukrainians have fled the Russian invasion since President Vladimir Putin began more than two months ago, almost all those who have crossed the border are women and children. They make up a staggering 90% of Ukrainian refugees. Mothers have suffered greatly from the immigration crisis, picking up pieces after their families break up, caring for children and elderly parents. CNN spoke to several who had lost their lives in the aftermath of the war and wondered if it was time to take their families back to Ukraine. A woman, Liudmyla Sobchenko, a 28-year-old from the Zhytomyr region northwest of Kiev, spent three weeks in Poland with her young son and mother before deciding it was time to return home. “I will not say that it is bad there in Poland … But it is not our land,” he said. Since the end of March, when CNN visited the station in Lviv, the flow of Ukrainians back into the country has continued to grow and is now about 30,000 a day, according to Andrii Demchenko, spokesman for the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. “We have no right to ask the purpose of the trip, but many women have agreed that they no longer want to stay abroad,” she told CNN on Tuesday. Some of the most shocking, early images of the war were from train stations across Ukraine. Crowds climbed in carriages, babies held high. Couples embracing in passionate, desperate farewells. Small hands and faces were pressed against the foggy windows as the fathers stood alone, weeping on the platforms. Many passed Lviv station before traveling to neighboring Poland or beyond. Hour by hour, a wave of women and children would disembark. The names of the cities and towns they left – Sumy, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson – created a constellation of suffering that crossed Ukraine, reflecting in real time where the fighting had erupted. They carried with them a few existing but burdensome stories. They said that after days or weeks of hiding in basements and warehouses, relentless bombardment, sirens and nightmares became excessive. Their children echoed the sounds of the bombs that forced them to evacuate: “Ba-ba-ka, ba-ba-ka! Boom, boom!” Weeks after the initial departure, the large Art Nouveau train station in Lviv, two miles from the old town, was still busy with moving families. But not everyone headed west. Some, like Sobchenko, had begun to return. There are even more people fleeing violence in the country than returning. But according to officials and those displaced by the war, the growing number reflects a gradual acceptance that the fighting could last for some time. With this in mind, many Ukrainians have decided that they would rather return and risk living in a conflict zone than being refugees in another country without a family or support network. This changing attitude also reflects the challenges for European governments trying to cope with the largest refugee crisis on the continent since World War II. In a room for women and children above the battle of the central terminal, families were reorganized. Some leaned on thin mattresses, staring blankly at the painted, vaulted ceiling from above. Others scrolled through a smartphone, reading the latest news from the front line. Sobchenko left the city of Korosten with her 3-year-old son Nazar and 57-year-old mother Tetiana in early March. The explosions were getting closer and closer to their home. Then, one night, an explosion erupted from the windows in Nazar’s room, and Sobchenko knew it was time to leave. They left their dog and cat behind, leaving with a few in addition to the clothes on their back and a bag with the essentials – medicines, documents, change. A bus ride to the Polish border, a journey that usually takes four hours, takes 24. They were accommodated with other refugees in Nowy Targ, a town south of Krakow, near the border with Slovakia, but could not settle. Nazar was trembling at night, screaming: “Mom, boom! After her mother suffered a nervous breakdown, which had to be transported by ambulance to the hospital, Sobchenko decided that despite the dangers, it was better to return.” I have not slept a single day. . “I had some anxiety and joy when I was thinking about home,” he said. As the young mother flipped through the train signs and the Telegram, Nazar, dressed in a blue and orange striped hood, sat in a nearby play area with other children, sifting stuffed animals, blocks and books. Sobchenko called him to give him a cookie and a hug. “I’m not talking to him about war. I’re just telling him it’s safe now, there’s no going to be a boom anymore. What can a mother do?” asked. Julia Kovalska, a 27-year-old volunteer who organizes games and other activities for children passing by the station, said it was creepy to see them talk about the horror they had seen. “Children always remain children, before and after the war. But their eyes are completely different. They talk about rockets, about bombs so calmly. I can even cry about it. Mothers cry, grandmothers and children talk about “This is an experience as it is,” he said. The war has displaced nearly two-thirds of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children and killed more than 160, according to UNICEF. Addressing the UN Security Council earlier this month, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told members that “when men like President Putin start wars, women and children are displaced,” they are hurt, raped and abused – and die. “What is happening to women and children in Ukraine is horrible beyond comprehension,” he said. In a recent survey of Ukrainian refugees in Poland — most of them women — the International Rescue Committee found that many had been seriously injured since leaving their homes, from family separation, human trafficking and physical and sexual violence. Staff working in the refugee centers said the report of the war on the children was disastrous. Many reported cases of injured minors crying or getting wet. In early March, with her baby son, Nadiia Taraatorina, 22, left her home in Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city in the heart of Ukraine and the homeland of President Volodymyr Zelensky, leaving behind her husband, father and others. male relatives. Taraatorina and her mother Liubov, 38, set out for the relative safety of western Ukraine, traveling to Lviv station and then to the Carpathian Mountains in the Zakarpattia region. Weeks later, he returned to Lviv – this time heading home. “We are going home, our father is waiting. He seems to have calmed down, but who knows what will happen next,” Taraatorina said. Her father, a volunteer in the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, told them that the fighting had calmed down and that it was safe for the family to return, but it was unclear how long this peace would last. As Taraatorina bottle-fed Artem, wiping the milk from his cheeks, her mother asked around for tickets and train times to Dnipro. “The child distracts me from the war. He is at such an age that he does something new every day. But it is difficult to be away from my husband, it is difficult to be ‘na chuzhyni’”, he said, using a moving phrase in Ukrainian to describe the dislocation of being away from home, in a strange and foreign country. It is a feeling expressed by many other women, who say they escaped the war to keep their children safe, but suffered from a disturbing and relentless sense of guilt that left their “homeland” behind. In the early days of the war, Yana Matiushenkova, 30, and her daughter Arina, 3, were crammed into a crowded train bound for Lviv from the Dnipropetrovsk region of central Ukraine. After days of chaotic travel, they finally ended up in Wroclaw, a city in western Poland known for its picturesque old town and market square. But she found it difficult to adapt to her new environment. “Here I was walking with my daughter in Wroclaw … everything is beautiful all around. And in Ukraine there are bombings, people do not sleep at night. This started to stress me a lot. They are probably guilty. I was told there is something like ‘survivor syndrome “Matyushenkova said.” Her anxiety and depression began to affect Arina, who she said became moody and started playing. Matyushenkova felt they could not wait any longer – they would travel back home to Kamianske. “I have no doubt about the correctness of my decision. I want to be close to my family, no matter what happens,” he added. Nadiia Aleksina, a psychologist who volunteered at the Lviv train station, spoke to many displaced people about this internal disorder. “The guilt of the survivor is something that is now common to the majority of Ukrainians. We all see what can happen to us. He will be with us for a while,” he said, explaining that he tried to remind mothers that they should not feel guilty about surviving and rescuing. their children. The decision to leave was something Ksenia, 32, struggled with for a while. The Kiev district where she lived with her husband and their two sons, 6-month-old Oleksandr and 3-year-old Andrii, was one of the first to be hit by Russian forces. Ksenia took them to her mother-in-law’s house in a suburb of the capital. Her husband had joined the army and wanted to stay close. But when the Russian troops advanced and her children held her …
