The war had been raging for almost a month when, in mid-March, an ambulance pulled up in front of a municipal children's sanatorium in Mariupol. At the wheel was a Ukrainian who had been helping people escape from the besieged city as a volunteer for weeks. This time, the Ukrainian authorities had asked him to evacuate all the children from the care facility who were left there without their parents. The rescuer found 17 children, the youngest two years old, the oldest 17. He loaded everyone into the ambulance and headed west out of the embattled city, taking his young passengers across the front line into Ukrainian-controlled territory.

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