(soft piano music) (crowd chattering) - [Katelyn] You can see that, um, oop there's a lot of volunteers here.

We have a medic tent over here.

- My name is Katelyn Ferral.

I'm an investigative reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I'm on assignment with USA Today in Poland covering the refugees coming across the border from Ukraine.

(tuck passing) So Poland, according to the UN I believe, is taking about 50%, a bit more maybe even, 50% of all the refugees going across the border.

I arrived here, like, the last Saturday in February I flew into Krakow from Chicago and I don't really know how long I'm going to be here.

That depends just on a variety of things.

I first traveled to Ukraine in the summer of 2013 when I was in graduate school.

I had an opportunity to go there and teach English at this English immersion camp at a university near Lviv and didn't have to pay for room and board.

And so I went and spent a little over a month there.

And after being in Ukraine, I actually completely changed my master's thesis and wrote it all about Victor Yanukovych, their former president who was ousted and fled.

Fled to Russia during the 2014 Maidon protests.

And so, obviously, the country had a real effect on me and I, I was really struck by the people that I met and I found them to have such soul and character.

(child playing) I'm doing a lot of reporting at train stations, places, you know, places where people are coming and going.

We've, a lot of these towns have now opened up, uh, refugee centers.

And so you see people crying in corners of, you know, sitting down in a train station crying.

You see people who just look so tired.

It's like, they look like zombies, you know.

Just this like shell-shocked expression on their faces.

(somber music) We had interviewed both of them after they had just arrived from Ukraine.

The night before they were in Krakow.

And so we met them at a hostel they were staying in.

And when we asked Damir what he remembered from the journey, he said, "bombs, bombs, bombs."

We see lots of mostly women and children without men with them.

Because right now Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are barred from leaving the country.

And so we see single, you know, mothers who are who are alone and talk about their husbands who have stayed behind either to fight or volunteer or for a variety of reasons.

Everyone, it seems, has left someone and a piece of their heart back in Ukraine.

As far as the the men that we've, I've talked to who are returning to Ukraine to volunteer and fight.

Yes, they love Ukraine, and many of the men who are returning to fight are Ukrainians.

And so they feel a soul tie to their country.

I met a man from Turkmenistan, a former Soviet country, and I've talked to him and, and other folks I've talked to who are not Ukrainian, um, but are from other places in Europe truly feel that their countries will be next.

That Putin will not just stop at the end of Ukraine and that what he, what his crusade is about and what he is fighting for transcends the border of Ukraine.

And that they're really fighting for democracy in the region as a whole.

(upbeat violin music) This is a scene from a train traveling from Lviv, Ukraine to Krakow in Poland.

It was just filled to the brim.

People shoving to get on these trains.

As you can see, there is a woman playing the violin serenading her fellow passengers, who stood there for 19 hours.

This kind of reporting is more exhausting than I think I anticipated.

(Man shouting) There's just a lot of dimensions to the trauma that folks are going through.

It's a, it's a, it's an interesting balance for me to be in those places and find ways to approach people compassionately.

How can I convey what's happening here in a way that has more staying power and that presents the nuance and complexity of it, rather than just the flash that sometimes can come when people rush into a conflict or a war zone like this?

(chanting) It's just important.

I think it's important for people in Wisconsin, and people just in general to read about what's going on in the world.

And one small kind of nice thing I, I think about what's going on is just that people are, People know a lot more about Ukraine and just the the wonderful people and culture that they are more than ever before.

- Milwaukee PBS.

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