The Russian invasion has forced hundreds of thousands to flee—while others are returning from across Europe to fight. Kateryna Popko. Photograph by Rafał Milach / Magnum for The New Yorker At Poland’s Przemysl railway station, near the border with Ukraine, the reporter Ed Caesar has encountered brave and resolute people moving in different directions. There are those who have fled west, like Kateryna Popko, a nineteen-year-old Ukrainian medical student, and her mother, Tatiana, who travelled more than six hundred and fifty miles, by train and bus, from their home town of Dnipro. In Kateryna’s retelling, the crowd on the train “from Dnipro to Lviv was so great that every inch of floor in the train car was taken, including people sleeping on roll-up mattresses. Some passengers even stuffed themselves into the overhead luggage racks.” There are men moving east, Ukrainians returning home to join the fight—“I’m going to barbecue,” one man says, referring to killing Russians. And then there are the stories of those who are absent, still in Ukraine, unable or unwilling to leave. A woman tells Caesar about her sister, who has stayed behind with her family: “She believes in our Army, and she thinks everything will be O.K. She is very strong.” —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor |
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