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Ukrainian refugees faced surreal journey to Russia

By Associated Press

July 20, 2022

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

People from Mariupol and eastern Ukraine disembark from a train at the railway station in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Thursday, April 7, to be taken to temporary residences in the region. About 500 refugees from the Mariupol area arrived in Nizhny Novgorod on a special train organized by Russia from eastern Ukraine, about 500 miles from the border.
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Evacuees from Mariupol, Olga Zabelina, left; her mother, Lyudmila Alfyorova, right, and Maria Bobrushova, stand outside the Sosnovy Bor (Pine Forest) sanatorium near Gavrilov-Yam, Yaroslavl region, Russia, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Moscow, on Tuesday, April 12. Zabelina's family decided one day to get in their car under bomb attacks and run away. "Attacks persisted, shells fell in houses, on people. The only car showed up in our district, I asked them to take me with them. We got in our car as well and left," Zabelina says.
3/22
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Evacuees from Mariupol, Sergei Mull, left; his wife, Daria Mull, center; and his sister's daughter, Maria Bobrushova, sit together during an interview at the Sosnovy Bor (Pine Forest) sanatorium near Gavrilov-Yam, Yaroslavl region, Russia, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Moscow, on Tuesday, April 12. Olga Zabelina's family decided one day to get in their car under bomb attacks and run away. "Attacks persisted, shells fell in houses, on people. The only car showed up in our district, I asked them to take me with them. We got in our car as well and left," Zabelina says.
4/22
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Valeriya Storozh, left, her husband Sergei, right, and son, Konstantin, evacuees from Mariupol, speak during an interview in their room at the Sosnovy Bor (Pine Forest) sanatorium near Gavrilov-Yam, Yaroslavl region, Russia, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Moscow, on Tuesday, April 12. Storozh, her husband and son want to get citizenship in Russia "to continue to live, to build a new life."
5/22
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Yelena Krylova, a former plant worker and evacuee from Mariupol, speaks during an interivew at the Sosnovy Bor (Pine Forest) sanatorium near Gavrilov-Yam, Yaroslavl region, Russia, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Moscow, on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Krylova was evacuated from Mariupol with her husband and son. "We were glad just to leave. We didn't ask where we were going, where we were going to be. At that moment, it was indifferent. We had to leave.," Krylova said. Krylova and her family are going to work at a local plant. The family also expects to get Russian citizenship soon.
6/22
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Valentyna Bondarenko, a refugee from Mariupol, Ukraine, poses for a picture in Pyatigorsk, Russia, on Thursday, May 12. Bondarenko asked migration officials how she could get out from a dormitory near the Georgia border where she was taken with 50 others from Mariupol. “There’s only one way open, which is to apply for Russian citizenship, submit an application, receive all the documents and when you get your passport you can go wherever you want,” they told her. They asked everyone with Ukrainian passports to hand them over to start the process. So she did. Then came a residency application and a document that an official would not let her examine.
7/22
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Dmitriy Zadoyanov, right, an evacuee from Mariupol, and Oleg Khubashvili, bishop of the Georgian Church of Evangelical Faith, greet each other in Tbilisi, Georgia, Sunday, April 17. Exhausted, freezing and hungry in a basement shelter in Mariupol, Zadoyanov finally accepted the idea of evacuation. The Russians told him he could board a bus to either Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine or Rostov-on-Don in Russia but in fact all the buses went to Russia.
8/22
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Dmitriy Zadoyanov, an evacuee from Mariupol, speaks during an interview in Tbilisi, Georgia , Friday, April 15.
9/22
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Ukrainian refugees enter their cabin after arriving on the ferry Isabelle in Tallinn, Estonia, Wednesday, June 15. Around 2,000 refugees from Ukraine live on the ferry.
10/22
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Ukrainian refugees line up as they arrive to get accommodations on the ferry Isabelle in Tallinn, Estonia, Wednesday, June 15. Around 2,000 refugees from Ukraine live on the ferry.
11/22
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Marina Nosylenko stands with her two sons on the ferry Isabelle in Tallinn, Estonia, Wednesday, June 15. Nosylenko left Mariupol on May 26 and took the train to St. Petersburg, Russia, with her husband and three children. They left Russia as quickly as possible, making the entire journey to Estonia in three days.
12/22
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Olha Exharzo and her 26-year-old granddaughter, Olha Exharzo, sit together inside their cabin in the ferry Isabelle in Tallinn, Estonia, Wednesday, June 15. Four generations of the Exharzo family left Mariupol on April 12.
13/22
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Refugee Olena Zorina stands on a deck of the ferry Isabelle in Tallinn, Estonia, Wednesday, June 15. Zorina, traveled with her husband and daughter from March 26 to May 1. They received help from Russian volunteers along the way via Russia. Now she is living on the ferry.
14/22
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A family from Mariupol arrives from Russia with their dog in Narva, Estonia, Thursday, June 16, more than a month after they left their hometown.
15/22
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A family from Mariupol speaks with a volunteer, left, after arriving in Estonia from Russia with the help of volunteers on both sides of the border in Narva, Estonia, Thursday, June 16. An Associated Press investigation has found that many Ukranian refugees are forced to embark on a journey into Russia.
16/22
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A Russian volunteer walks through Narva, Estonia, Thursday, June 16. The tattoo artist helps Ukrainians into Europe, making trips twice a week either to Finland or Estonia with them.
17/22
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Oleksandr Fedorov speaks in Narva, Estonia, Thursday, June 16. Fedorov is a Mariupol resident who was outside Ukraine when the war started. He's now part of the chain of volunteers helping people to reach Europe through Russia. His wife and one child are still in the city.
18/22
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A family from Mariupol arrives in Estonia from Russia with the help of volunteers on both sides of the border in Narva, Estonia, Thursday, June 16. A clandestine network which includes Russian volunteers transports Ukrainians out of Russia, with them ending up as far away as Norway, Ireland, Germany and Georgia.
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Ukranian refugee Viktoria Kovalevska poses for a photo in Tallinn, Estonia, Saturday, June 18. Kovalevska was evacuated from Mariupol with her husband and two daughters. The family tapped into the network of Russian volunteers to leave for Estonia, where they now live in Tallinn.
20/22
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Ivan Zavrazhnov stands near a ferry where he is living now in Tallinn, Estonia. A producer for a pro-Ukrainian television network in Mariupol, he made it through a Russian-controlled filtration point only because officials never bothered to plug in his dead cell phone. He escaped to Belarus, then Poland, then Estonia, leaving Russia behind with great relief.
21/22
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Lyudmila Bolbad and her son, Gleb, evacuees from Mariupol, Ukraine, sit with their dog, Luna, in their hotel room in Khabarovsk, Russia, on Monday, July 18. "Now we are here, deal with getting citizenship, have just gotten jobs, children in kindergarten and school. We're trying to return to a normal life somehow, to encourage ourselves to start our life from scratch," she said. "If you survived (the war), you deserve it and need to move forward, not stop."
22/22
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Lyudmila Bolbad, an evacuee from Mariupol, Ukraine, holds her Russian documentation in her hotel room in Khabarovsk, Russia, on Monday, July 18.

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