PRZEMYSL, Poland (AP) – While tens of thousands of people have fled Ukraine every day since Russia’s invasion, a small but growing number are heading in the other direction. At first they were foreign volunteers, Ukrainian expatriate men heading to fight and people delivering aid. But increasingly, women are also heading back.
Motivated by a desire to help loved ones in trouble, or just to contribute to the defense and survival of their country and compatriots in ways large and small, such women are braving the bombs that have increasingly pounded Ukraine since Russian forces invaded on Feb. 24.
Many are not refugees themselves but women who had been living and working abroad. Others had already chosen to stay put in their country but were forced to cross the border to shop for needed goods as supplies dry up under the onslaught at home.
“I will go back and help. I am a health worker, so the hospitals need help,” said Iryna Orel, 50, tugging her luggage before boarding a train from Przemysl, Poland, to Lviv in western Ukraine. “And I will stay until the end.”
Poland has taken in more than 1.8 million refugees, or over 60% of the total exodus of 3 million people since the invasion. In the same period, Polish border guards have estimated that at least 186,000 people have journeyed into Ukraine, more than four in five of them Ukrainians.