His mother, Julia Pisecka, put her son on a train heading for the border in the hope that he would be taken in by kind-hearted strangers.
stay in Ukraine
“There is a nuclear power plant next to my city that the Russians fired at,” she says in a video message. She couldn’t leave the country herself, as she couldn’t leave her 84-year-old mother behind. “So I sent my son to the Slovakian border alone by train.” Fortunately, the boy met people who wanted to help him. He was cared for by many, the Slovak police writes with the video on Facebook. “Whether police, military, customs officers, volunteers or various religious or civil organizations, the boy was provided with transport to Bratislava. He’s okay!”
Thanks to the telephone number on his hand, the family of the Ukrainian boy was eventually contacted and they were able to pick him up.
Losing parents
Of the 800,000 children who fled Ukraine, more and more are arriving in neighboring countries without parents. This is evident from messages that Save the Children received from border areas. Many of the children who are out alone are under the age of 14. It is likely that relatives themselves will not be able to leave Ukraine, but still want to take their children to safety. Sometimes they send the children along with neighbors or friends, but there are also children who lose their parents or friends in the chaos.
Serious consequences
Save the children tries to trace as many relatives of children traveling alone as possible and arrange for family reunification while continuing to ensure the safety of the group. But that does not alter the fact that the war and the flight can cause psychological stress, fear, insecurity and fear of separation. “But children are also at risk of violence, exploitation, human trafficking and abuse,” explains Irina Saghoyan, director of the organization. “These children need protection. The faster we act, the better chance we have that these families can still be reunited.”
Source: Save the children† AD† BBC