Associated Press: 1 million children leave behind lives, friends in Ukraine

© Provided by Associated Press Annamaria Moslovska, a ten-year-old from Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, smiles in a waiting room at the train station in Zahony, Hungary, Monday, March 7, 2022. After hearing bombs falling in her hometown of Kharkiv, Annamaria Maslovska left her friends, her toys, and her life in Ukraine and set off on a two-day journey with her mother to Hungary. From inside the train station at the town of Zahony, on Hungary’s border with Ukraine, the 10-year-old said she is worried about her friends in Kharkiv after the messages she sent to them on Viber have gone unanswered. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

© Provided by Associated Press Annamaria Moslovska, a ten-year-old from Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, speaks in a waiting room at the train station in Zahony, Hungary, Monday, March 7, 2022. After hearing bombs falling in her hometown of Kharkiv, Annamaria Maslovska left her friends, her toys, and her life in Ukraine and set off on a two-day journey with her mother to Hungary. From inside the train station at the town of Zahony, on Hungary’s border with Ukraine, the 10-year-old said she is worried about her friends in Kharkiv after the messages she sent to them on Viber have gone unanswered. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

© Provided by Associated Press Refugees sleep at night at the train station in Przemysl, Poland, Wednesday March 2, 2022. The number of Ukrainians forced from their country since the Russian invasion has been increasing on a daily basis. (AP Photo/Marc Sanye)Annamaria, who was raised alone by her mother, is one of more than 1 million children who have fled Ukraine in the less than two weeks since Russia first invaded the country, something UNICEF spokesperson James Elder called “a dark historical first.”

That means that children represent around half of the more than 2 million people that have fled the war, an exodus that the U.N. refugee agency has called the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

Most of those fleeing the war have entered countries on Ukraine’s western border, like Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova. The majority have gone into Poland, where 1.33 million refugees have crossed according to the Polish Border Guard agency.

Moldova Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița told CNN on Sunday that one in every eight children in her country is a refugee.

© Provided by Associated Press Groups of Ukrainian refugees walk along the road between Lviv and Shehyni, in Volytsya, Ukraine, Saturday March 5, 2022. The number of Ukrainians forced from their country since the Russian invasion has been increasing on a daily basis. (AP Photo/Marc Sanye)In addition to children, most other refugees are women — the mothers and grandmothers of the children that are bringing them to safety — since Ukrainian men from age 18 to 60 aren’t permitted to leave the country.

That policy is aimed at keeping men available to fight against Russian forces that are making deeper incursions into Ukrainian territory.

Annamaria’s hometown of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city with 1.5 million inhabitants, has undergone heavy bombardment by Russian forces. Residential areas in the city near the Russian border were shelled for several days before a missile strike hit a government building in the city’s central Freedom Square last week, killing at least six.

© Provided by Associated Press A refugee cries shortly after crossing at the Medyka border crossing in Poland on Saturday March 5, 2022. The number of Ukrainians forced from their country since the Russian invasion has been increasing on a daily basis. (AP Photo/Marc Sanye)Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “frank, undisguised terror.”

Even though she’s only 10, the precocious Annamaria, now a refugee, already knows she wants to be an actress in the United States, and is proud of speaking English at a high level.

“I want to be an actress in USA and English is a very popular language,” she said. “A big percent of people in the world know it and it’s very easy to speak it in other countries.”

© Provided by Associated Press A group of refugees in the Tesco shopping center, situated between the border town of Medyka, and Przemysl, Poland, Friday March 4, 2022 that has been set-up for families who have managed to leave Ukraine to rest. The number of Ukrainians forced from their country since the Russian invasion has been increasing on a daily basis. (AP Photo/Marc Sanye)She and her mother, Viktoria, planned to travel on to Hungary’s capital, Budapest, but didn’t know where they would go after that. Annamaria said she hoped to visit Disneyland in Paris.

© Provided by Associated Press Groups of Ukrainian refugees walk along the road between Lviv and Shehyni, in Volytsya, Ukraine, Saturday March 5, 2022. The number of Ukrainians forced from their country since the Russian invasion has been increasing on a daily basis. (AP Photo/Marc Sanye)Once the war ends, she said, she wants to go back to Kharkiv and reconnect with her friends who have been scattered by Russia’s violent invasion.

“If war stops, I really want to go home because there are my friends, there are beautiful parks, supermarkets, centers, and playgrounds behind my house,” she said. “Kharkiv, it’s like a piece of your heart.”

© Provided by Associated Press Lines of Ukrainian refugees at the border with Poland in Medyka queue to take a bus, which will take them to Przemysl Friday March 4, 2022. The number of Ukrainians forced from their country since the Russian invasion has been increasing on a daily basis. (AP Photo/Marc Sanye)___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

© Provided by Associated Press Refugees sleep at night at the train station in Przemysl, Poland, Wednesday March 2, 2022. The number of Ukrainians forced from their country since the Russian invasion has been increasing on a daily basis. (AP Photo/Marc Sanye)