MEDYKA, Poland — Iryna Dukhota has been married to her husband for 26 years. She met him when they were young, as he was riding his bike through her neighborhood in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
But a few days ago, on a gray, windswept morning, with thousands of people rushing around them, the couple stood at the Ukraine-Poland border, lips quivering. After all these years, it was time to say goodbye.
“I told him ‘I love you’ and ‘We will see each other soon,’” Ms. Dukhota said, her eyes pooling.
Now, she says, she does not know when or even if she will ever see him again.
As the Russian Army bears down on Ukraine from the north, south and east, a mass migration of millions of civilians is gathering like a storm over the plains.
But the international border gates are a painful filter, splitting families apart. The Ukrainian government has mandated that men aged 18 to 60 are not allowed to leave the country, so the crowds pouring into Poland, Hungary and other neighboring nations are eerily devoid of men. It is almost exclusively women and young children who pass through the checkpoints after heartbreaking goodbyes. The Ukrainian men, whether they want to or not, turn back to fight.
Some Ukrainian women referred to the separations as “a little death.”
Medyka, Poland, is one such sorting point. A small village on the Poland-Ukraine border among endless wheat fields, faintly illuminated by a pale sun at this time of year, its roads are now lined with Ukrainian women and children marching west, bundled against the wind.
While a spurt of nationalism is being celebrated in Ukraine, and young men and their fathers are pouring into military recruitment centers, it is a much different mood at the border. The refugees said they felt…