NPR reports:

Medyka, Poland is a quiet and idyllic farming village near the southeastern border with Ukraine.

But in recent months, it has become the busiest border crossing for Ukrainian refugees since the war with Russia began in late February.

In February and March, refugees waited for hours or days there to cross into Poland. Now, the flow has reversed. The long lines are on the Polish side of the border filled with people waiting to cross into Ukraine.

Anna Kobernyk and her friends have been waiting in a van for six hours, parked in a line of vehicles almost 10 miles long.

“We were waiting all night here and all of us are really tired,” she says.

Kobernyk is a graduate student from Kyiv getting a masters in International Relations. Over the last few months, this war has given her a crash course.

“It is my practical lesson. It’s sad, of course. That actually the 21st Century is not so fantastic. That U.N. and many, many others, all of them can do nothing,” Kobernyk says.

Weeks after the war began, the Medyka border crossing was filled with refugees leaving Ukraine. People wept, afraid that they were departing their country forever, not knowing if they would even have a country to return to.

Now, even though there is still death and fighting in Ukraine’s south and east, the scene here at the Polish border has lost the panic and fear it once had. [Continue reading…]