Irina Dukhota has been married for 26 years. She met her husband when they were both young and he rode his bicycle through the neighborhood where she lived in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. But a few days ago, on a gray and windy morning, the couple stood at the Ukrainian-Polish border, their lips trembling as thousands of people ran around them. After all these years, it was time to say goodbye.
“I told him ‘I love you’ and ‘let’s see each other soon,'” Dukhota said, her eyes filling with tears.
Now she says she doesn’t know when she’ll even see him again someday.
With the Russian army invading Ukraine from the north, south and east, a massive migration of millions of citizens is brewing, like a storm sweeping across the plains.
But the gates of international border posts are a painful filter that separates families. The Ukrainian government has decreed that men aged between 18 and 60 cannot leave the country; thus the crowds arriving in Poland, Hungary and other neighboring countries are devoid of men, creating a strange impression. It is almost exclusively women and children who pass through checkpoints after heartbreaking goodbyes. Like it or not, Ukrainian men return to fight.
Some Ukrainian women describe the splits as “a small death”.
Medika is one such triage post. The roads of the small village on the Polish-Ukrainian border, nestled among endless wheat fields lit by the pale sun of this time of year, are now crowded with women and children, bundled up against the wind, marching westward.
An explosion of nationalism is being celebrated in Ukraine. Young men and their fathers crowd the military recruitment centers. But the climate on the border is very different. Refugees say they feel separated not only from their country but also from their families.
They talk about being lost, lonely, confused. Overnight, countless mothers became heads of families in a foreign land, with suitcases and small children, fiddling with two cell phones at the same time or taking nervous drags on cigarettes. “I still can’t believe I’m here,” said Irina Vasylevska, who had just left her husband in Berdichiv, a small town in the encroached north of Ukraine.
Now forced to fend for herself with her two children, aged 9 and 10, Irina said she is so stressed that she hasn’t slept in two days and hasn’t been able to eat much.
“It’s all blocked,” she said, pointing to her throat with her trembling hand.
Her husband, Volodymir, is at home, awaiting orders from the authorities. On the phone, he sounded sad that he was hundreds of miles away from his wife and children, but added: “My heart is lighter knowing they won’t be listening to the sirens anymore.”
Another man, Alexei Napilnikov, had encouraged his wife and daughter to flee the country for his own protection. “This separation is like falling into the void. I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again in my life.”
Under martial law imposed by the Ukrainian government on February 24, all men between the ages of 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving the country, unless they have three or more children or work in certain strategic sectors, such as acquiring weapons for the country. Some men managed to sneak out in the early stages of the war, but soon after that Ukrainian border guards began to search the cars lining the border and order the men to remain in the country.
Some people find this policy sexist. There are also women who remained to fight. Why can’t families choose who goes with their kids, mom or dad? Questioned, a Ukrainian official cited the country’s military policy, saying that while some women volunteer for military service, they are not required by law to do so.
But it’s not just husbands and wives who are being forcibly separated. Families spanning multiple generations are also being split. There’s a saying in Ukrainian that goes something like this: “It’s good to have kids so you can have someone bring you a glass of water when you’re old.” The custom in the country is for people to live close to their parents and help them in their old age.
But among the crowds that pass through Medika’s gates and other border posts, there are hardly any older adults to be seen. Most of them chose to remain in Ukraine. “I’ve been through this before. The sound of sirens doesn’t scare me,” said Svetlana Momotuk, 83, speaking on the phone from her apartment in Chornomorsk, near the port of Odessa.
She said that when her granddaughter’s husband came to say goodbye, she yelled, “You’re not taking my grandchildren away! What the hell are you thinking?” But now she says she’s relieved that they’re gone, despite how much she misses them. If they expected to feel immense relief from leaving the war-torn country behind and crossing an international border, many refugees say that has not yet happened.
What they feel instead is guilt. Several women said they felt terrible for having left their husbands and fathers in the path of an invading army. Despite now being safe, having been taken in by a Polish friend, Dukhota revealed: “I feel sadness inside.”
Her husband owns a chain of convenience stores and has never held a gun before. Now he, like so many other Ukrainians, has enlisted in a local defense unit to face the Russians.
Dukhota and her husband remained together until the last possible moment. Like them, others have also left areas in immediate danger together, heading to cities like Lviv, in western Ukraine, which until now have been spared the relentless bombing that ravages other parts of the country.
Some women were dropped off at the Lviv railway station to board a crowded train to Poland. Others said their husbands drove them to the border. The women said that at train stations there were patrolled barricades to ensure that no men boarded.
Each couple interviewed remembered the last words exchanged. Many said little. In many cases there was a small child, confused and distressed, between his anguished father and mother, with tears streaming down his face. “Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” were Vasilevska’s last words to her husband. Then she started crying and couldn’t say anything else.
