Watch: Emotional reunions for Oleshky evacuees after years in Russia-occupied city
I keep thinking about those ambulances. The buses make sense, but the ambulances tell you something about who has been living under that occupation, and in what condition. These are people who survived years of something we can barely imagine, and the medical vehicles say more than words about what that survival cost.
What makes this story strange is the suspended time. Oleshky has been a place you couldn't leave, couldn't properly communicate with, a dark pocket on the map where people's lives kept moving forward without any of the visible signs of normal life. Now that pocket has split open, and people are meeting versions of themselves and their families that lived in a parallel reality. The reunions are full of tears, but also of shock, because you've aged, they've aged, and the child you left behind is now a teenager. I think the ambulances are the true headline: the war isn't over for these people, it's just shifted into a different kind of help.