On the Ukraine border: Anger, grief and bewilderment as war crushes lives and rips apart dreams

For a conflict that began less than a week ago, the war in Ukraine has already crushed so many lives and ripped away so many dreams.

At a border crossing between Ukraine and Poland, no one can come to terms with how quickly and violently the life that they knew has been torn from under them.

United in their anguish and confusion, they are also literally divided. On one side Ukrainian families say desperate goodbyes to their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 60 are not permitted to leave, and some families stay together until the very last moment. The only consolation for those moving on is that they can move through the border within hours.

On the other side are non-Ukrainians. Students and professionals from dozens of different nationalities. Not permitted, they told us, to board the buses headed to the border, many had walked here and are now forced to wait in line for days with no shelter, no blankets, no warmth, nothing.

The cold bites savagely. I am wearing layers of insulated winter clothing under a thick coat. My feet are inside boots designed for the Arctic. After just 20 minutes, I am shivering.

We meet a man from Algeria, frozen and delirious. He wouldn’t move and kept muttering incoherently. “It’s not my fault,” he says. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” We beg him to get somewhere warm. Barely able to move his legs, he is eventually dragged away by some fellow countrymen whom he had only just met at the crossing.

A family is here from Afghanistan. Among them, a woman cradles her baby, Sumaya, born the day before Russia launched its first strikes. They did not think she would survive. Her mother’s arms ached from carrying her for days.

We lose sight of them in the crowd, but then find them again later. “They didn’t let us cross,” they say. “The baby didn’t have document.” This was their fourth attempt to reach the border and still they couldn’t make it across.

We follow them to a school being used as a makeshift shelter. There is warmth here, volunteers with hot tea and coffee, food. But how will they reach safety?

The pain of this war, just days old, ripples out across this country; waves of grief, anger and bewilderment, and no clear sense of what is yet to come.

* Arwa Damon is Senior International Correspondent at CNN. Follow CNN’s coverage of Ukraine on CNN International. @arwaCNN