Thursday, March 10, 2022

Half the population of Kyiv now refugees

Refugees in large numbers are not new --hello Syria, hello, Afghanistan, hello, South Sudan, hello, DRC-- but the speed at which the number of Ukrainian refugees has risen is devastating. Two million people as of last night's NPR news, half of them children. And this morning in the newspapers and their websites, the news that half the population of Kyiv is now displaced. That's half of the capital city, a city of close to three million inhabitants. Think of the most populous city of your state (or country if you are not a continent-wide country like the US or Canada or Australia) and half the population fleeing on short notice, in less than two weeks. The other half in a makeshift fortress city watching for enemy armies. The mind boggles. The heart races, or nearly stops.

From The Guardian today:

Russia-Ukraine war latest news: half of Kyiv population has fled, mayor says; Turkey talks end without progress on ceasefire

I will shortly post in the comments to this post the names and website info of reliable aid organizations. 

A child, held by his mother, waves from a train window to his father outside, directly below the window.

Stanislav, 40, says goodbye to his son David, 2, and his wife Anna, 35, on a train to Lviv at Kyiv's railway station in Ukraine on March 3, 2022. Stanislav is staying to fight while his family is leaving to seek refuge in a neighboring country.

Emilio Morenatti / AP

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