Video: Survivors describe the horror of Mariupol, and the terror of escape.

They exit their cars, and then, the tears flow.

For the first time since fleeing the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukrainians arriving at a reception center for displaced families realize they are finally on safe ground.

In Zaporizhzhia, just over 200 miles from Mariupol, an endless line of cars and buses streams into a retail parking lot, where volunteers register evacuees into an official database for internally displaced people.

These families join the one in four Ukrainians who have been forcibly displaced from their homes during the war, according to the International Organization for Migration.

“Either you will die in the city, or you will try to leave it,” said Olga Rashevskaya, who arrived with her two children. “We decided that if there’s the slightest hope, we need to leave.” Read more

@nytimes