SAŞA, 5 YEARS OLD, REFUGEE IN COCIERI (DUBĂSARI, MOLDOVA) FROM PERVOMAISK (UKRAINE), three weeks after the start of the war:

“It was announced on the news that the sound of the siren means that a Russian missile is flying toward us , to destroy a house in Ukraine. I remember the explosions, I heard them while I was putting away my toys at home. At one explosion I couldn’t understand what it was and I asked:

Then we woke up and everyone was writing that Ukraine was being bombed. I didn’t understand what that meant. I thought maybe mom had dropped something.”

This is just a fragment from the video interview given by Sasha, one of the youngest refugees from Ukraine, less than three weeks after the war began. The experience of war and exile seems to have transformed him overnight into a wise old man.

Watch Sasha’s story in the reportage “Children of War”, alongside other Ukrainians who are part of the first wave of refugees sheltered in Dubăsari. By that time, over 3.7 million people had left Ukraine. Through the Palanca Border Crossing alone, more than 136.000 children had entered at the border crossing points with Ukraine.

Nastea, a refugee with her daughter and her cats, Olga and Pictorița are other Ukrainian refugees in Dubăsari whose story appears in the reportage “Children of War“.

The refugees’ impressions are moving:

RUSLAN CANDIT, THE “GUARDIAN ANGEL” OF REFUGEE FAMILIES

Ruslan Candit took special leave to help the refugees, together with others like him. Together they help them with everything they need, providing clothes and food.

“I suffer with them,” says Ruslan in the interview. He knows from his own experience how painful refugee life is and how traumatic it will be, later on, for today’s children – he himself was a refugee with his family in 1992, during the Transnistria War. He was a small child at that time.

“I still remember everything, those moments never leave my mind. It will be the same for these children,” Ruslan adds.

Beyond being a reportage about individual cases, “Children of War” is a document of a phenomenon. It is about something that war can never defeat. It is about humanity and hope. About how kindness, love and empathy save lives and bring people and countries together.