A girl and her hamster: Half of Ukraine's children flee war
MOSTYSKA, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s invasion has displaced half of Ukraine’s children. On a hospital bed in a town close to the border with Poland, a little girl with a long blonde braid and dressed in pink is one of them.
To get there, Zlata Moiseinko survived a chronic heart condition, daily bombings, days of sheltering in a damp and chilly basement and nights of sleeping in a freezing car. The fragile 10-year-old became so unsettled that her father risked his life to return to their ninth-floor apartment 60 miles (90 kilometers) south of the capital, Kyiv, to rescue her pet hamster, Lola, to comfort her.
The animal now rests in a small cage beside Zlata’s bed in a schoolhouse that has been converted into a field hospital operated by Israeli medical workers. The girl and her family hope to join friends in Germany if they can arrange the paperwork that allows her father to cross the border with them.
“I want peace for all Ukraine,” the little girl said, shyly.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-health-europe-lifestyle-poland-7d580e869aac613dcf41fc12614b7723
Ukraine refugees’ hopes of return wane after a month of war
MEDYKA, Poland (AP) — As Russia launched its war in Ukraine last month, exhausted and frightened refugees streamed into neighboring countries. They carried whatever they could quickly grab. Many cried. They still do.
The United Nations says that more than 3.6 million people have fled Ukraine since the war started exactly one month ago Thursday, in the biggest movement of people in Europe since World War II. Most believed they would soon be back home. That hope is waning now.
“At the beginning, we thought that this would end pretty soon,” said Olha Homienko, a 50-year-old woman from Kharkiv. “First of all, nobody could believe Russia would attack us, and we thought that it would end quickly.”
Now, Homienko said, “as we can see, there is nothing to look forward to.”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-world-war-ii-kharkiv-9780e14e38a0471660fd5221454b3674