SIRET, Romania -- Ten days into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, 1.45 million people have fled the battered country, according to the U.N.-affiliated Organization for Migration.
The U.N. has predicted that the total number of refugees could swell to 4 million, to become the biggest such crisis this century.
Most have arrived in Poland and other neighboring European Union countries, with the bloc granting people fleeing Ukraine temporary protection and residency permits. Some are starting to make their way to countries farther afield.
More than 100,000 people have reached Slovakia, with many planning to continue to the neighboring Czech Republic, which has a sizeable Ukrainian community. Czech authorities are creating classes for thousands of children to be taught in their native Ukrainian.
Hundreds arrive daily by train in the German capital, Berlin. Farther away in Italy, 10,000 refugees have arrived, 40% of them children, with the education ministry indicating plans to get them into classrooms so they can integrate.
Iryna Bogavchuk wanted to keep a light load for the journey to Romania from Chernivtsi, across the Carpathian Mountains in southern Ukraine, just 30 miles away.
"I took my daughter," she said, stroking the child sleeping in her lap. "I hope we will be all right."
Instead of belongings, which would have weighed her down, Bogavchuk carried Polaroids in her wallet. They showed happier times, such as her daughter's 10th birthday or her husband, whom she left behind as Ukrainian men of military age are banned from exiting the country. "I miss him," she said through tears.
Ludmilla Nadzemovska traveled to Hungary from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. She planned ahead for the worst -- purchasing traveling cages for her four cats a month ago as U.S. intelligence indicated Russia's intention to invade. But the decision to actually leave was made in an instant: after hearing her neighbors had been killed by Russian forces.
"I want to go back" she said, sitting in a camp in Tiszabecs, Hungary, just over the border. "But my priority is my family and the pets."
Information for this article was contributed by Bela Szandelszky, Helena Alves, Karel Janicek and Frances D'Emilio of The Associated Press.