From Kyiv and Lemberg (Lviv), Freiburg's partner city, new bad news about bombing raids, fatalities, supply shortages and families torn apart comes every minute.

The Evangelical City Mission and the city administration in Freiburg succeeded on Sunday in sending a small sign of hope in the midst of the disaster: 157 children from Kiev and 30 caregivers were brought to Freiburg under dramatic conditions after a 70-hour flight via Poland and temporarily accommodated in a youth hostel.

Ruediger Soldt

Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

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Four days after the arrival of the war refugees, Lord Mayor Martin Horn (independent) stands in the town hall garden and speaks of a “small ray of hope in dark times”.

"We have shed more tears in the past few days than in previous years," said Horn on Thursday.

Then the educator Anna Kuptsova, the head of the children's home "Father's House", Roman Korniiko, a bus operator and the teenager Oleksandr Bohdanov report on their experiences on the three-day escape.

"When we left Kyiv, we told the children it would be an adventure, everything would be fine," says teacher Anna Kuptsova.

"But the kids knew it was a lie.

It was always dead quiet on the buses, the children neither laughed nor cried.”

Disaster almost struck

The children were given strict instructions to drink as little as possible in order to minimize break times and gain time.

But when the bus convoy had to stop at a gas station near Rivne, disaster almost ensued.

It was already night when the sky suddenly became bright with fire.

The convoy had covered about 300 kilometers, and it was another 200 kilometers to the Polish border.

Suddenly, Russian soldiers shot at the buses.

"The children had just gotten off the bus when the shelling came suddenly, we didn't even know where the shots came from," says the teacher.

It was unclear whether it was a drone attack or an airplane attack.

Luckily, the Ukrainian police reacted quickly: the police officers frantically rushed the children back to the buses, buckled them up, and instructed the bus drivers to turn off the lights.

Then they turned on all the blue lights and sirens on the police vehicles - to distract the Russian attackers.

"We had explained to the children when they left Kyiv that we would bring them to safety," says Anna Kuptsova.

"How are we supposed to explain to them now what would happen if even one bomb fell on the gas station?" The diversionary maneuver worked.

The convoy reached the Polish border, and the buses had to wait there for twelve hours before they were dispatched.

The Ukrainian police paved the way for the buses in a special lane.

Many mothers were waiting with their children in front of the border, they wanted to be taken along, but there was still no space in any of the buses.

Anna Kuptsova says she found this situation and the discussions with the refugee women very stressful.