(8 Mar 2022) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4369833
As much of the world celebrates International Women's Day on Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women are displaced from their homes and in the midst of arduous journeys to unknown destinations as they flee a devastating war.
A decree by Ukraine's government that prohibits men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country means that most of those fleeing Ukraine are women and children.
That policy, meant to encourage men to sign up to fight against Russia's invasion or to keep them available for conscription into the armed forces, means that they are turned away at Ukraine's borders with its western neighbours, leaving women, children and the elderly to continue their journeys on their own.
More than 1.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the war began last week, according to the U.N. refugee agency, in what they called Europe's fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.
Most refugees are seeking safety in Poland – more than 1 million had entered the country as of Monday – while some 180,000 had crossed Ukraine's border into Hungary.
Polina Shulga, 27, who worked in a rehabilitation centre in Kyiv, boarded a train with her three-year-old daughter Aria in Ukraine's capital on Sunday and arrived in Zahony, Hungary the next day.
She told her daughter that they were going on vacation, and that they would return home to Kyiv.
She said she was afraid of what will come next after they left their home without a specific destination in mind, but believed that the experience was making her a stronger woman.
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