By Zoeann Murphy and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Illustration: The Washington Post, The Washington Post, March 15, 2022
The wave of refugees flooding through Europe is striking not just for its historic scale and speed, but because half the people who have fled the war in Ukraine are children. Many have had to say goodbye to their fathers before undertaking difficult and disorienting journeys with mothers and siblings, sometimes waiting more than a dozen hours in the cold before being allowed to cross into safer countries. Parents have agonized over how to explain what was happening. Some kids heard they were going on vacation. Others were told directly: Our homes are not safe, and Dad must stay behind to defend our country.
To understand how some of these children are experiencing the war, The Washington Post asked young refugees at the train station in Przemysl, Poland — near the Ukraine border — to draw what stood out about the past weeks.
A home and family left behind
Veronika Lotova, 9, brought along her stuffed bear when she left her home in Ukraine’s Donbas region. She calls the bear Volodya, after a character in a television show she watched with her grandparents. Her family tried to get her grandparents out before the war, but they wouldn’t leave. Her mother worries that they and Veronika’s father won’t survive the bombings.
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