At the Ukrainian border, a mother brings a stranger’s children to safety

Clutching a mobile phone number of a woman she had never met, Nataliya Ableyeva crossed the border from Ukraine into Hungary entrusted with a precious cargo: a stranger's children.

Waiting at the border crossing on the Ukrainian side, Ableyeva had met a desperate 38-year-old man from her home town of Kamianets-Podilskyi, with his young son and daughter.

The border guards would not let him pass. Ukraine has banned all Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving, so they can fight for their country.

"Their father simply handed over the two kids to me, and trusted me, giving me their passports to bring them over," 58-year-old Ableyeva said, the arms of the young boy she had known for just a few hours around her neck.

The children's Ukrainian mother was on her way from Italy to meet them and take them to safety, the father said. He gave Ableyeva the mother's mobile number, and said goodbye to his children, wrapped up against the cold in thick jackets and hats.

Ableyeva had left her own two grownup children behind in Ukraine. One a policeman, the other a nurse, neither could leave Ukraine under the mobilisation decree.

She took the two small children by the hand and together they crossed the border.

When 33-year-old Anna Semyuk arrived, her blond hair scraped back in a ponytail, she hugged her son and went to her daughter, lying exhausted in the back of a car and wrapped in a pink blanket.

Then she thanked Ableyeva. Standing in the cold on the scrubby ground, two women embraced for several minutes and started to cry. "All I can say to my kids now, is that everything will be all right," said Semyuk. "In one or two weeks, and we will go home."