While hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians flee their nation, some Ukrainian men and women are returning home from across Europe to help defend their homeland in the face of Russia’s invasion.
The Polish Border Guard on Sunday said that about 22,000 people have crossed into Ukraine since Thursday, when Russia invaded the nation.
At the checkpoint in Medyka, in southeastern Poland, many stood in a line early on Sunday to cross into Ukraine.
Photo: Reuters
“We have to defend our homeland. Who else if not us?” said a moustachioed man in front of a group of about 20 Ukrainian truck drivers walking to the checkpoint to enter Ukraine.
They came from across Europe to return to Ukraine.
Another man in the group said: “The Russians should be afraid. We are not afraid.”
Members of the group declined to give their names, or gave only their first names, citing their security and that of their families.
Denis, 28, who has spent six months working at construction sites in Poland, said he was returning to Ukraine where his “everything” is.
“I’m on my own here in Poland. Why should I be here? So I go, for the homeland,” said Denis, with a small Ukrainian blue-and-yellow national flag on his winter jacket.
“I want to go back to join the army, to fight. We will see, we hope we will win,” he said.
In the nearby city of Przemysl, Janiel, 27, was also preparing to return.
An engineer by education, he has been working in construction in Wroclaw, Poland, but could not remain knowing his homeland was being attacked.
“I talked to my parents and I cried, and I just decided to myself that I can’t watch that and I can’t just stay in Poland as Russians destroy our independence, destroy our cities, kill our citizens, kill our children, kill our elderly people,” he said in English.
Before the exodus, there were at least 1 million Ukrainians in Poland, working or studying. The women often work as caretakers for the elderly across the EU, and in many cases leave their children back in Ukraine with grandparents or other relatives.
Lesa, 36, from Lviv, spoke just before entering the checkpoint building, following her brother into Ukraine.
“I am afraid, but I am a mother and want to be with my children. What can you do? It’s scary, but I have to,” she said.
Another young woman, Alina, said she was returning to get her children and take them out of Ukraine.
“We have to, we Ukrainians have to take our children away ... to allow our boys to fight,” she said.
On Ukraine’s side of the border, a man was directing those arriving to a place where vehicles and buses were waiting to take them onward.
The Czech Republic, which borders Poland to the southwest, is planning to support Ukrainian families living in the nation whose men decide to return home to fight.
The government is preparing to pay bonuses to families who would lose income if “the men need to join the [Ukrainian] army,” Czech Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Marian Jurecka said.
There are about 200,000 Ukrainian workers in the Czech Republic, the majority of them men.
Czech railways said that men traveling back to Ukraine can take any train free of charge. They need to travel through Poland or Slovakia to reach Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has stayed in the capital, Kyiv, boosting the morale of Ukrainian fighters as Russian troops were closing in on the city.
Zelenskiy has banned men of military age, 18 to 60, from leaving the nation.
Ukrainian authorities have also called on foreign volunteers to come and fight in Ukraine’s defense.
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