Nataliya Ableyeva helped bring two young children across the border to reunite with their mother after Ukraine's decree barred their father from accompanying them.
A Ukrainian father made a parent's hardest decision when he entrusted a stranger with his children so they could be brought to safety.
The 38-year-old man was stopped at the border with his two young children by guards, as Ukraine has banned men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country in an effort to gather forces to defend their land against the Russian invasion.
Nataliya Ableyeva was waiting at the border during the interaction, and said the man handed his children over to her.
According to Ableyeva, the father said the children's mother was on her way from Italy to meet them. He bundled his son and daughter up and gave the woman his children’s passports in good faith that she would get them to Hungary safely.
Ableyeva, 58, held onto the mother’s cell phone number written on a piece of paper and the young boy’s arms around her neck as they walked across the border.
Ableyeva herself had left her adult children behind due to their professions as a policeman and nurse.
Once they made it to the Hungarian side of the border, the three waited on a bench near a tent set up for refugees.
When the young boy’s cell phone rang, he responded with tears, as his mother was finally on her way to the border to reunite with her children.
As the children's mother Anna Semyuk finally reunited with her little ones, she and Ableyeva shared a long, tearful embrace, as Semyuk shared with Ableyeva her hope that her own children would be with her again very soon.
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