As Russia launched its war in Ukraine last month, exhausted and frightened refugees arrived in neighboring countries. They carried whatever they could grab in a hurry. Many cried. They still do.
The United Nations says that more than 3.6 million people have fled Ukraine since the war started exactly one month ago Thursday in what is the biggest movement of people in Europe since World War II. Unprepared, most refugees believed they would soon be back home. That hope is waning now.“At the beginning, we thought that this would end pretty soon,” Olha Homienko, a 50-year-old woman from Kharkiv said. “First of all, nobody could believe Russia would attack us, and we thought that it would end quickly.”Now, Homienko said, “as we can see, there is nothing to look forward to.” Homienko’s hometown of Kharkiv is among several Ukrainian cities and towns that have been encircled and shelled heavily by the Russians.