As Yana Ibragimov and her two young children waited at the Lviv train station, it was snowing. This was March 7, 2022, early in the war in Ukraine. Russian troops were advancing. A day earlier, Russian shells had killed refugees like them in Irpin. The family, tired and scared, searched the parking lot for the bus that was supposed to take them and dozens of other women and children to safety in Poland.
Yana’s husband, Anton, had seen a flyer for the bus on social media, and Yana, 25, and their kids, ages 4 and 5, had arrived in the morning to wait for it. As an able-bodied man who was barred from evacuating, Anton learned from afar that his family was still waiting hours later. He complained to the group that had arranged the evacuation, an organization he’d never heard of called the New Federal State of China. An NFSC representative repeatedly assured him buses would show up soon. They didn’t.
