Australian Hugh Simpson is one of an estimated 350,000 people to enter Poland from Ukraine in the past few days.
When the sirens sounded over Kyiv last Thursday, he was prepared — he and his partner left swiftly, their car packed with extra fuel and food.
It took 46 hours to cross safely out of Ukraine.
"I'm a veteran of both Iraq and the Middle East and served in Solomon Islands and spent… 10 years in the armed forces. It was still surreal for me. We had Russian helicopters buzzing [above] us," he said.
"I think the hardest thing was watching kids carrying their belongings, their teddy bears … and walking the six, seven, 10 kilometres to be able to leave the country, leave their home."
Under martial law in Ukraine, fighting-aged men (those between the ages of 18 and 60) are not allowed to leave.
"It was sad to see, but I never saw any of them argue.
"On the road out, there was column after column of Ukrainian army moving towards Kyiv.
"The look of steely resolve on their faces as they were about to go off to no doubt battle the Russian forces – you could see everyone was cheering for them, and they knew what they had to do."
His main concern now is for the safety of the staff at his IT company — one was making molotov cocktails, while another had joined Ukraine's "IT army" for cyber attacks.
Shocking scenes from Kharkiv under siege
Not everyone has been able to get out of Ukraine.
Aamir Rizwan, an international student from India, is studying medicine in Kharkiv, just 40 kilometres from the Russian border.
It's the site of some of the fiercest fighting, and the city of 1.5 million came under heavy shelling on Monday and Tuesday.
A missile attack on the city's administration building hit so close to his home that "my windows almost came out," Mr Rizwan said.
"It's traumatic. I had seen the visuals of the Middle East civil war and stuff like that. But I never imagined this is how it is, when you wear the shoes."
The medical student said his professors at the local hospital have been seeing patients from both sides, mostly men in their early 20s.
"They come with limbs [severed] and gunshot wounds… I don't have any words."
He had stocked up on supplies to last three weeks, but after the intensity of the attacks in Kharkiv overnight and changing advice from the Indian government, he planned to try and leave the city for Lviv in the west of Ukraine.
India's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said an Indian student lost his life in Kharkiv — someone Mr Rizwan knew, describing the incident as a "terrible loss".
An image that will stay with him was seeing mothers who began running into bomb shelters, briefly forgetting their babies, with men who were standing and smoking nearby picking up the babies to bring them inside.
"The mothers, when they enter, they realise they've left the baby — like 10 or 20 metres, not really far — and they started crying, and everyone is crying," he said.
