Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, more than six million Ukrainians have fled the country in search of refuge, while, as of this writing, nearly eight million have been internally displaced. Although the Biden Administration has promised to admit at least 100,000 Ukrainians into the United States, the majority of refugees are sheltering in countries such as Romania, Hungary, and especially Poland, which has received roughly half of the total refugee population.
As a photojournalist, I have been back and forth to Ukraine from February through May and during the time I was there I have witnessed both the destruction left in the war’s wake as well as the perseverance of Ukrainians as they set out for asylum.
Families wait at the Lviv train station in tunnels underneath the platforms for what seemed like hours. Even once they were safely boarded, the faces of the children and their parents show no signs of relief.
At the train station in Lviv, Ukraine, the atmosphere reflects the gray skies. Throughout the afternoon, crowds swell with people arriving to the city from areas of the country seeing heavy bombing and fighting.
A Vietnamese Ukrainian refugee has a seizure after suffering a panic attack in Lviv while waiting in a crowded line to board a train to Poland.
A Ukrainian family walks into Poland from the Polish-Ukrainian border after being processed at a checkpoint in Medyka, Poland.
Natalya mourns the death of her son Alexander, a forty-year-old real-estate agent. He was killed, she says, as he tried to rescue her when Russian troops entered the Ukrainian city of Irpin and she hid in an underground shelter. She says his body showed signs of torture and he had a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
African international students fleeing Ukraine arrive at the train station in the Polish city of Przemyśl.
Serhiy, fifty-six, spends the afternoon helping his neighbors recover tools buried in the rubble to rebuild their house in Chernihiv, Ukraine. The city had been under siege for thirty days, with 700 people killed, according to Vladyslav Atroshenko, the city’s mayor.
Refugees flee Irpin following intense fighting in the suburban area outside of Kyiv.