Palanca/Chisinau, 23 January 2023 – The road from the Ukrainian border with Moldova spools out like a grey string among dull brown hills, ragged bushes, sad trees, watched over by a slate-grey sky which pushes out occasional snow flurries into the freezing fog.

But this flat, silent, heath means safety. It means hope. It means a pause to the constant barrage of artillery, the whine of sirens and drones, the rush for the bunker, the dark, the cold, the smell and the grime of war. The terror can be set aside, and life can start again.

Larysa has just got off a bus that took her from the border to the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) bus station outside the small town of Palanca. Three days ago she left the Donetsk region, and criss-crossed the vastness of Ukraine, first to Lviv on the Polish border then back east and south, searching for a way out. A 2,000-kilometre, three-day journey with her sick daughter.

She’s already planning what happens next, this streetwise market trader. Her conversation, like all those who have just left the hell of war, comes in ebbs and flows, torrents then silences, stifled tears and too raw memories. Disbelief. Relief.

Now comes a ten-hour bus-ride to Bucharest, down those windy Moldovan roads to a new life, the dread in her throat receding as night falls and the kilometres tick by.

“When I get to Bucharest I want to apply for a job, find work, accommodation,” she says. “The most important thing is that there is no shooting there. That it’s peaceful, and your child goes to bed without saying, ‘mama will we wake up tomorrow’?”