(26 Feb 2022) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4368070
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians rushed to the borders as invading Russian troops pressed their advance into Ukraine and toward the country's capital on Saturday.
Some walked many miles through the night, pulling suitcases and carrying children, while others fled by train, car or bus, forming lines miles long at border crossings.
They were greeted by waiting relatives and friends or headed on their own to reception centres organized by governments.
The line of vehicles waiting to enter Poland at Medyka stretched many miles into Ukraine.
Near a border crossing in Meydeka, Ludmila Lazorova, a Ukrainian living and working in Germany who was picking up family at border, begged for the war to end.
"Russia, take away your children from our land. I am the same, a mother like you. I don't want our children to be killed," she said.
Jeremy Myers, from England, who was on vacation in Ukraine with his girlfriend and who left the country for Poland, described the conditions as dismal at the border crossing on the Ukraine side.
"It was awful there were there were queues stretching for miles, there was a big holding area which I affectionately called, "'The Cage," where there was crushing, there was fighting," he said.
Poland's government said Saturday that more than 100,000 Ukrainians had crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border in the past 48 hours alone.
A woman from Lviv named, Lena, described toys and bags along the way that were so heavy that people abandoned them.
She was bringing her four children to safety in Poland and planned to return to join her husband.
Like many of the Ukrainians who plan to return to support their country in its fight, she would only give her first name.
Poland declared its border open to fleeing Ukrainians, even for those without official documents, and dropped its requirement to show a negative COVID-19 test.
Those arriving were mostly women, children and the elderly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday banned men of military age from 18 to 60 from leaving the country.
Some Ukrainian men were reportedly heading back into Ukraine from Poland to take up arms against the Russian forces.
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