‘We’re going to stay here.’ Women in a small border town refuse to leave Ukraine, saying, “We will fight.”

Ukraine’s Solotvyno Lilya Solodovnik observes her pigtailed 6-year-old, Lena, rocking on a blue toy pony, in the first moments of peace since escaping her house. Russian forces have pounded their hometown of Kharkiv, and her friends and family are now hiding in bomb shelters.

Solodovnik, along with scores of other women and children from Ukraine’s beleaguered cities, has taken refuge at a former orphanage that has been converted into a shelter in Solotvyno, a village tucked in the Carpathian mountains near the Romanian border. They’re battling it out for the last mile out of the nation.

“I don’t want to leave my husband alone in Ukraine,” says Solodovnik of her partner, who worked as a driver until three weeks ago. He dropped his family off here before returning to fight. “Ukraine is still present here. It’s where I call home “She tells CNN about it.

Since the Russian invasion on February 24, more than 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine. Thousands have walked the thin, wooden bridge spanning the peaceful Tisza river to Romania, a member of the European Union and NATO, even in rural Solotvyno, one of Ukraine’s tiniest border crossings.

Nina, a retired kindergarten teacher from a Kyiv neighbourhood who is residing in Solotvyno with her daughter and granddaughter, says that when they came, the volunteers showed them the boundary. She’s afraid to reveal her last name. “But then the wheels in our heads started turning: ‘Why should we go?’ We are in Ukraine, at home.'”

These ladies are now trapped in a no-land man’s of the heart they haven’t fled their country, but they’re also not at home with their loved ones, who are facing Russia’s attacks.

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