Should I stay, Refugees from Ukraine, safety and home, heartbreaking human drama, Ukraine's borders, Ukraine, Hundreds of thousands of refugees, Russian air strikes
Should I stay or should I go? Refugees from Ukraine are torn between safety and home
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A heartbreaking human drama is unfolding along Ukraine’s borders, with fleeing refugees passing through homesickness on their way back, while others who fled and then returned flee for their lives for the second time.
Women and children are still fleeing a country being ravaged by what has been dubbed Russia’s “creatures from Hell.”

Hundreds of thousands of refugees, however, are returning home and vowing to stay.

Many others have had to flee a second time, believing it was safe to return only to discover it was not.

An AFP team has been traveling along the country’s borders to report on the aftermath of Europe’s largest exodus since World War II, which has displaced more than five million people, according to the UN.

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They met Iryna Ustyanska as she was carrying her suitcases across a bridge into Romania’s Sighetu Marmatiei.

She and her two children were refugees for the second time in a month, fleeing from Odessa to Bucharest after the invasion as Russia bombed.

They decided to return home at the beginning of this month, but they were only able to do so for a few hours before Russian air strikes shook the strategically important Black Sea port.
“We thought the fighting wasn’t so intense, but we were wrong,” she said, holding up her phone to show pictures of the city’s black pall of smoke.
Her eight-year-old daughter Olena and 15-year-old son Danylo had to say their father goodbye for the second time, not knowing when they would see him again.

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“It’s very difficult for them,” Ustyanska said.

“They are hoping that we will return very soon because they cannot imagine living abroad without their father.”

Their story is typical of the tides of despair and hope that push and pull on the waves of refugees.

Despite the dangers of a war entering an even bloodier second phase, hundreds of thousands of people have decided to return to Ukraine and fight.
To try to tell all of these stories, the AFP team drove 2,500 kilometers (1,555 miles) along Ukraine’s western border earlier this month, from the northernmost crossing in Dorohusk, Poland, near Belarus, to Isaccea, Romania, on the Danube’s banks.

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