Children in Crisis

If you were starving and you knew the sale of one of your children would prevent the rest of your children from dying, would you do it?

The grief and mourning that each and everyone carried on their shoulders were visible. As I walked alongside them I felt how utterly unfair life was: we were crossing the same border, but my situation was entirely different. I hold a passport that allows me to travel almost everywhere, I had a hotel reservation waiting for me in Poland, and once my deployment finished, I would fly safely back to my home base. They were marching into the unknown and faced having to process profound feelings of loss, whether of a loved one, of a homeland, of social status, of well-being, of a future.

17-year-old Oleksandr fled Ukraine with his mother and two younger brothers, Dmitri (11) and Iurii (6). His father is still in Ukraine. The rest of the family left when rockets started flying above their house

Pages