Live updates: follow the latest news on Russia-Ukraine
In the rear window of nearly every car in the kilometres-long queue stretching from Mayaky, Ukraine to the border of Moldova is a handwritten sign reading: CHILDREN. It is a desperate plea to Russian soldiers whose shelling and shooting these families had to pass through to make it safely to the far south-western edge of their country.
More than 1.7 million refugees have flooded out of Ukraine in the 12 days since the Russian invasion began, according to the UN refugee agency. Some 60 per cent of those went to Poland, but 220,000 have already crossed into Moldova — one of Europe's poorest countries which lies close to Ukraine’s southern cities, including Odesa.
On the day The National visited, the queue of vehicles inched slowly towards the crossing.
While some cars, packed with people and belongings, drove through the border, others crawled towards excruciating goodbyes.
Under martial law, men of fighting age must stay in the country, leaving fathers and husbands to quickly unload their wives and children, say a few words, give a final kiss and watch as their families disappeared into the throng of those who were now refugees.
A few cars back from the front of the queue, Dimtry held his 3-year-old son Alexei in his lap in the driver’s seat of their SUV, stroking his hair and willing the traffic jam to last just a moment or two longer as he watched the cars ahead inch forward, unload their precious cargo and turn back.
“We drove all the way from Kyiv. It took us nearly two days to get through all the checkpoints and accidents — all the roads are a wreck,” he said as his wife readied their bags through tears in the back seat.
When asked what he would do if — or rather when — the border guards turned him away, he looked numb. “We haven’t thought that far.”
Another car pulled up to one of the drop-off points and a family of four piled out.
Through tears, Yuri fumbled with the straps of the baby carrier as he helped his wife Natasha secure their daughter, in a bright pink snow suit, to her chest. She repeated their check-in plan to her husband like a mantra as she gathered their two suitcases, their older son standing by, looking stoic or perhaps merely stunned.
The family headed towards a striped marquee where volunteers were handing out tea before people joined the queue at the border crossing. As they parted ways, Natasha called back, in a moment of utter practicality, “Yura, did you lock the car?”
At the drop-off point a man stood alone outside his car, staring in the direction of the crossing.
Was he waiting to pick up someone crossing back into Ukraine?
No, he replied. Was he trying to go across? No, he said, that would not be possible.
“I just couldn’t leave yet, it was too quick” he said, still staring towards the border. He had dropped off his wife and children more than an hour earlier — they were already safe on the other side, yet he still could not bear to leave.
While most farewells were brief as border guards kept people moving, others arriving on foot tarried longer. Nadia and Ivan stood several hundred metres back from the crossing, holding hands and talking. The young couple would both try to cross, but knew he was likely to be turned away.
In their final moments together they spoke not of what the immediate future would bring — the waiting in the cold, gray afternoon at the crossing, the bus to Chisinau and onto Bucharest, the distance between them — but of what the brighter future they longed for would look like.
“We have so much hope that all of this will be over soon, that we’ll be back together and back home,” Nadia said.
