PRYMYSL, Poland (AP) — While more than 3 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, a small but growing number is moving in the other direction. At first, these were foreign volunteers, Ukrainian emigrants who returned to fight, and people who delivered aid. Now more and more women are coming back.
Driven by a desire to help loved ones in need, or to make a big or small contribution to the defense and survival of their country and compatriots, these women are not afraid of the bombs that are increasingly falling on Ukraine after the invasion of Russian troops on February 24.
Many of them are not refugees, but Ukrainian women who lived and worked abroad. Others have already chosen to stay in their own country, but have been forced to cross the border to buy needed supplies as supplies run dry under pressure from home.
“I will come back and help. I am a medical worker, so hospitals need help,” said Irina Orel, 50, dragging her luggage as she boarded a train from Przemysl, Poland, to Lvov in western Ukraine. And I will stay until the end.
As the Ukrainian government orders the men to stay and fight, the vast majority of people fleeing Ukraine are women, children and the elderly. For those unable or unwilling to leave, the dangers are many, and footage such as a mortally wounded pregnant woman carried on a stretcher from a maternity hospital in Mariupol testifies to the dangers.
However, some women have chosen to return to shooting and bloodshed to do their part in any way they can.
By phone after arriving in the port city of Odessa, which has so far remained under Ukrainian government control, Orel said she was initially frightened by air raid sirens and the sound of explosives, but “sitting and shaking with fear doesn’t help. ”
She sees her role as providing medical care, but other women may decide to help defend the country militarily, she said.
“Women know how to fight,” she said. “Many women are patriotically defending Ukraine – why not?”
Women rushing to war zones or participating in hostilities are nothing new. Female servicemen were a prominent part of the Ukrainian army before the war, including in combat roles. Some women, like many men, take up arms for the first time. In addition, gender equality in the workplace, as well as in the military, is traditionally more prevalent in post-Soviet states such as Ukraine than in many other parts of the world.
Since the invasion, Polish border guards have recorded more than 195,000 people crossing from Poland to Ukraine, more than four out of five Ukrainian citizens, spokeswoman Anna Michalska said Tuesday. This includes people who come and return – to buy food and other supplies in Poland and return, or who bring relatives and return. Thus, some people are counted multiple times.
Poland has taken in more than 1.8 million refugees, more than 60% of the total exodus of 3 million people since the invasion, according to UN agencies. The UN Refugee Agency initially predicted that about 4 million people would leave the refugees, a figure that could soon be eclipsed.
“What can I say, really? Three million refugees in just two weeks. It’s frightening and it won’t stop,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in an interview in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where he traveled to reassure Afghans that, despite the horrors of the war raging in Ukraine, they were not forgotten.
“Everyone is asking how many refugees will come out of Ukraine,” he said. “The answer is very simple: I just don’t know.”
Deliveries of humanitarian aid are sent to Ukraine, as well as reports of the flow of weapons and fighters ready to use them. The International Committee of the Red Cross said 200 tons of medical supplies and emergency supplies have arrived in the country, including water, mattresses, blankets, food, first aid kits, plastic tarps and more than 5,000 body bags.
Less attention is paid to the entry or movement across the border of women who are either trying to deliver aid or remain in the country to continue their lives in the best possible way.
“I am returning to Ukraine to help people evacuate,” said Maria Khalika, who lives in Italy and is heading to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. “I am now in a more stable condition than my friends who are under rocket fire and bombs.”
“I know that Kyiv will also be occupied, and we will use the last chance to help other people,” Khalika said, adding that she believes Russian troops will eventually capture the capital.
Some women return to join their families and others to help in any way they can, either as medical workers or in the military.
“We plan to return to the family and together with the family we will decide what to do next,” said Olga Simanova, 56, who came from Germany to return to her family’s hometown of Vinnitsa.
Meanwhile, the number of refugees continues to grow.
James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, said about 1.4 million children left Ukraine since the invasion, or an average of about 73,000 per day.
This, he says, amounts to “55 every minute. So we are almost – ever since the war started on February 24 – (to the point where) every second a child becomes a refugee from Ukraine.”
They have fled to countries in Eastern Europe: Romania has taken in over 450,000, Moldova over 337,000, Hungary over 263,000 and Slovakia around 213,000, according to UNHCR’s latest count on Tuesday. The Polish capital Warsaw alone received about 300,000 refugees, about 15% more than its population of over 1.7 million.
“These are huge numbers,” said Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu, who on Tuesday signed a €10 million ($11 million) deal with Italy to help with the refugee crisis. “The number of refugees is 4% of the total population of Moldova.”
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Kiten reported from Geneva. Monika Szyslowska in Warsaw, Poland; Wira Loy in Przemysl, Poland; Helena Alves in Chisinau, Moldova; and Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Afghanistan contributed to this report.