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The unlucky ones without transportation had to make the trip on foot. Over the weekend, the line of traffic stretched for 30 kilometers (19 miles), backed up with cars and people. Staif managed to get on a train for a 16-hour journey to Lviv, and from there continued on foot toward Poland.
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When Russia invaded last week, pummeling Ukrainian cities with airstrikes and shelling - including Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city - many piled into trains and cars to the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, before heading to the Polish border. Staif succeeded and moved to Ukraine the following year, in February 2020. Staif’s father advised him to go study in Ukraine, where getting a visa - at least in theory - was easier than in other places. Poverty and inflation soared in an unprecedented economic collapse. In 2019, the situation in Lebanon deteriorated dramatically, with the economy crashing and people taking to the streets in mass protests. Staif went to neighboring Lebanon, where he graduated from high school. Like so many other families, they scattered - some went to the United Arab Emirates, some to Germany. His father defected from the army and the family was forced to leave Syria. Airstrikes, shelling and street fighting were common. In 2013, rebels fighting to topple Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad were in Staif’s hometown of Douma, at the doorstep of the capital, Damascus. They fled to neighboring countries, with Poland taking in the highest number. I told my friends ‘I can’t believe I’m reliving the same experience’,” Staif told The Associated Press in Germany, where he has since reunited with his family.Īccording to the United Nations, more than 1 million people have fled Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, the swiftest refugee exodus this century. “The same sounds of bombs that I heard in 2013, I heard now in Kharkiv.