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Davide Monteleone

Amoakohene Ababio Williams, 26, originally from Ghana, says he was separated from his Ukrainian wife, Sattennik Airapetryan, 27, and their one-year-old son, Kyle Richard, along with other Black men, just before reaching the Polish border after fleeing Odesa. “I was thinking, that’s all. Maybe I will not see her again.” He made it.

Iryna Novikova, 42, left Kyiv with her daughter on a moment’s notice—without changing clothes, brushing her teeth, or showering. “In such a moment you need none of that. I don’t know how I ran; my legs just carried me.” Her daughter had told her the attack was coming, but “I just couldn’t believe it.”

An exhausted refugee steals a moment of rest in Medyka, Poland, near the border with Ukraine where some 100,000 refugees have already crossed.

Iryna Kuzmenko, 41, and her daughter, Arianda Shchepina, 11, from the city of Zaporizhzhia, have a quiet moment together outside the Juliusza Slowackiego High School in Przemyśl, Poland, where refugees have sought shelter and support.

Iryna Butenko, 33, and daughter  Kateryna Falchenko, eight, fled Kharkiv in a panic. When a train finally appeared, says Iryna, “we ran while they were shooting from behind.” She does not want to go back, ever. Katya feels safe now: “No one is shooting or threatening us. My mom is always near me.”

A pile of footwear collected by volunteers is ready for distribution to refugees from Ukraine entering Poland near Przemyśl.

A makeshift bed lies outdoors at a refugee reception center near the Medyka crossing between the Ukrainian and Polish borders, on the outskirts of Przemyśl, Poland.

Ludmyla Kuchebko, 72, from Zhytomyr has left the air-raid sirens behind but worries for her son in Kyiv. Looking to God to “save not only my son, but Ukraine,” she prays for every passenger on every train. “Today we pray not only for Ukraine—we pray for Russia, for our brothers and sisters there.”

Valentyna Turchyn stands for a portrait with her mother (also named Valentyna Turchyn) and her three daughters: Maya, five, in a pink coat, Tanya, seven, and Galyna, 16. All are bundled against the cold at a shelter in Poland after fleeing from their home city of Cherkasy, Ukraine.

Refugees from Ukraine try to find some normality in their tent at the reception point for refugees in Medyka, Poland, as they wait to continue their passage to other destinations in Europe.