[indistinct conversations, children shouting]
-I have a toy bear.
Well, it's a regular bear, I like to sleep with it.
I sewed him a pair of pants, by myself.
-9-year-old Veronika just arrived in Poland,
and soon, she'll be on a train to Germany.
She brought her bear from home,
in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
-The thing is, in our town,
we live 7 kilometers away from the war,
and for nine years there has been active warfare there.
[explosion in distance, dog barking]
[When] they resumed shelling nearby villages,
our town got hit too.
We had no electricity, no water, no food for some time.
I was telling her like it is, that we had to escape,
because she's young and her entire life is ahead of her.
[dog barking]
[indistinct conversations]
-Anna Lotova and her daughter made it out,
joining more than 3 million others who have been forced
to flee Ukraine.
More than half are children --
55 every minute since the war began, according to the UN.
-We're speaking to families, to mothers who have been spending
20 hours, 30 hours on the road.
The kids are getting physically sick on the way.
You know, not only from, potentially, illness,
but also just from the fear and the exhaustion.
So when they arrive in Poland, they cross the border
and they have this sort of sense of, "OK, we're here,
but now what?"
-Most of the children arriving here are without their fathers,
who are required to stay in Ukraine to join the war effort.
[indistinct conversations]
13-year-old Zhenia is drawing the moment he was separated
from his dad.
-This is my sister, and this is me.
Following this arrow means we were allowed to pass
and he wasn't.
This is the bus we arrived on, and this is a person
who checks documents,
and this is a border guard with his weapon.
-For his mother, Tanya, leaving her husband
was an agonizing decision.
-We were thinking for a long time
whether we should go or not.
But their dad insisted that we should leave.
For the sake of the kids' safety.
I think they are old enough to understand everything.
They were told about it at school
and we were trying to explain to them why it was happening
rather than scare them.
-Experts in child trauma say one of the most important things
parents can do is talk to their kids
about what they've been though.
-[This] is the train we were riding
and a river above the train.
This is me riding a train and playing a game with my sister.
-Diana is drawing the natural beauty
she saw out the train window on her journey to Poland,
more than 600 miles from her hometown in Sumy.
She remembers the morning the war began.
It was the day she turned 7 years old.
-It was my birthday.
We would start making a cake
and have to go to the basement right away.
[conversation in native language]
-There were five explosions within two hours.
They were trying to blow up our thermal power station
so that people would be without water, electricity, and heat.
We were living in constant fear, afraid of dying.
This is how our days went by.
[conversation in native language]
-For Alyona and Diana and the rest of the families
passing through here, the immediate danger may be over,
but they still don't know when they'll return home
or what will happen to those they left behind.
-My grandma and grandpa stayed in Ukraine.
I didn't want to go.
I'm OK now.
I'm not worried about them.
I call them.
[I tell them] that I really love them,
and everything will be fine.
Yes, and that I'll be back soon.
[conversations in native language]