LVIV, Ukraine — For one exhausted, bedraggled Ukrainian woman — driven from her home by Russian bombs, her soldier husband in peril on the war's front lines — safe haven seemed at hand when her early morning train screeched into the majestic but freezing Art Nouveau railway station in Lviv, the country's westernmost big city, a few days ago.
It was not to be. The middle-aged teacher was told, kindly but firmly, that there was no available spot in any of the shelters for displaced people and that she should keep heading west, out of Ukraine.
"When we said we could not find a place for her here, she cried and cried and cried," said Hanna Bystrytska, a 27-year-old volunteer greeting arrivals at the rail station. "She said she couldn't bear to leave Ukraine while her husband was serving at the front. But in the end, that was what she had to do."
