On March 8, nearly two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Taisiia Mokrozub took her infant son, parted from her husband and joined an exodus to safety in Poland. She believed the war would end quickly and she would be home by May.
But a half-year later, with shelling near a nuclear power plant in her hometown of Zaporizhzhia, and the front line so close, the 36-year-old's husband is telling her to stay in Poland with their now-11-month-old baby. She now dreams of being home by winter, hoping Ukraine will have prevailed by then against Russia's onslaught.
As the war reaches the sixth-month mark Wednesday, many refugees are facing the sad realization that they will not be going home soon, if they have homes to return to at all. With missiles falling even far from the front line, many wouldn't feel safe yet, even in areas under Ukrainian control.
So they are biding their time, waiting for the end of a war that shows no signs of ending soon, longing for home and refusing to think too far into the future.
With a new academic year starting, some are reluctantly enrolling their children in schools abroad, worried they will fall behind in the Ukrainian system. Others take jobs below their skill levels. With most refugees being women, those with very young children, like Mokrozub, are unable to work.
“It seems to me that not only for me but for all Ukrainians, time has stopped,” Mokrozub said. “We all live in some kind of limbo.”
Russia's invasion has created the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. The UN refugee agency says a third of Ukrainians have fled their homes, with more than 6.6 million displaced within the country and over 6.6 million more across the continent.
European countries have welcomed them without the political backlash that met influxes of refugees from the Middle East and Africa in past years, however.
Poland has taken in the most Ukrainians, with an estimated 1.5 million having registered for national ID numbers that allow them social benefits. Germany, which doesn't require visas for Ukrainians, has registered more than 900,000, though it isn't clear how many of those may have gone home or headed elsewhere.
Warsaw now has 180,000 Ukrainian refugees — representing a tenth of the Polish capital's population of 1.8 million — the largest single grouping anywhere.
Though Ukrainian and Russian — which is also commonly spoken back home — are heard on the city's streets and grocery stores now carry some Ukrainian foods, the newcomers have integrated with little trouble and seem almost invisible.
For many of the refugees, Poland's Slavic language and culture offer something familiar and reassuring. The country's proximity to Ukraine makes it possible to travel back for short visits with husbands and fathers who are banned from leaving due to the war effort.
“We didn't want to go farther,” said Galina Inyutina, 42, who arrived in Poland in early March from Dnipro with her 11-year-old son. They long terribly for their forests and fields and food.
“Mom, if we go farther away then it will take us longer to get home,” he told her.
The arrival of so many people has exacerbated a preexisting housing crisis in Warsaw, where rental prices have surged 30% over the last year, as well as other cities that have attracted large numbers of refugees.