The Cut - My Journey out of Ukraine

When I first heard an explosion in the city of Kharkiv, I was walking alone. It was the early afternoon of February 24, a few hours into the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The streets were empty, which made me anxious; I heard another explosion and ran into the nearest hotel. Later that day, I would find out that shelling and artillery fire on the outskirts of the city marked the beginning of a massacre and that a 14-year-old boy was one of the first victims.

As a human-rights journalist, I’m trained to work in hostile environments. I’ve been writing about the conflict in Ukraine’s separatist regions for seven years, and I’d been in eastern Ukraine covering the humanitarian crisis on the front lines since December. But it still came as a shock when Russia launched the largest military attack in Europe since World War II, resulting in at least 1,900 civilian casualties in less than three weeks. After finding myself stranded in the epicenter of the fighting, I fled the country with some of the 10 million Ukrainians who have been forced to leave their homes, witnessing firsthand how difficult it is to get across the border to safety. Escape isn’t even an option for the many without the resources to flee, or for those who can’t part from loved ones.

Ukraine must be victorious. The political statements behind Putin’s puffy blue coat and Zelenskyy’s T-shirts. Here, how you can help all refugees — from Ukraine and beyond. Style setters from Egyptian princesses to Jackie Kennedy have embraced leopard prints; now proponents of a “species royalty” want designers to pay to help save endangered big cats. Fact-checking Republicans’ attacks on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record on crime. Here, have a nice story about baby elephants at the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in northern Kenya. And listen to Bright Eyes and Phoebe Bridgers cover Elliott Smith’s “St. Ides Heaven.”

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