A single mother escaped Kyiv with her 5-year-old at the onset of the Russian invasion. She is one of 8 million refugees who can only dream of returning home.

Sun, 02/26/2023 - 16:58

A image of Kyiv before the war partially covered by an image of Kyiv after with a silhouette of a woman and a child in the foreground — Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images; iStock; Rebecca Zisser/Insider

Kseniya Kharchenko and her then 5-year-old son fled Kyiv a day after the start of the invasion.
Since then the single mother has fantasized every day about returning to her country and family.
"I don't have a plan. I have a fantasy," Kharchenko told Insider.

The sky over Ukraine was streaked with missile smoke as bombings began and troops advanced in a ground invasion, as Kseniya Kharchenko packed what she could carry in her Volkswagen Golf and —with her then 5-year-old son in tow — began searching for a safe place to escape the war just a day after the Russian invasion began on February 24 last year.