More than anything else so many who arrive on the border are in a state of nervous and physical exhaustion. Either what they’ve fled from or the journey they’ve made has been deeply traumatic, or both. 
Like virtually every woman with kids we meet here, Marianna told us her husband had just enlisted. She also told us that the kids are aware of the war. Last night before she went to sleep, Amelia (10) asked her Mum whether she and the family would be shot in the night.
The thing which really strikes you about the kids here is how still they are. Virtually none are crying. They’re stunned, frightened. By the time they’re across the border they’re cold and hungry, essentially spent.
The repetition of the sequence you see here is unnerving. Every 90 seconds, as clockwork, another family- a woman, two, three or more kids, sometimes with a grandmother- appears. Each time the father almost certainly just enlisted. None of them knowing if they’ll see him again.
One woman told me that she’d resisted leaving with her kids for days but it became so dangerous yesterday her husband insisted. She told me half her family now can’t flee, as they’re cut off. Eg parents in southern Ukraine (Mariupol). Water down, communications down.
It’s taken them so long to get here. When they do it must feel quite anti-climatic. Once they do, usually, there’s nothing to do but wait, potentially for a long time, for your ongoing transport. You can see the legs virtually give way when they finally cross over the frontier.
It is disturbing seeing people whose lives are in disarray, and internalising the contingency of it. Contingency that (1) any of us should be there at all (flowing solely from Putin’s decision last week) and (2) that their life is in disarray and mine or yours isn’t.
Talking to refugees they’re also wrestling with that gnawing sense- in their case that they should have escaped and their friends and relatives have not.
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1499502007559852033
Lots of people asking me how they can help refugees. My experience here suggests there is a copious amount of supplies already. Best thing would be to donate through DEC.
https://twitter.com/decappeal/status/1499308618608431104
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