Ekataryn Velychko, 35, a mother who had escaped from Mariupol with her eight-year-old daughter Anastasia and five-year-old son Radion, was one of the first to descend, her face gaunt and stricken.

“I’m from hell on earth,” she said. “For weeks we were in the basement with no water, no food, no electricity and no gas. My house is destroyed, the city is 90% destroyed. Most people can’t get out. My children are completely broken.

She was followed by a heavily pregnant mother, Anna, also 35, with her son, Dima, seven, and his crying mother, Valentina, 70, three generations looking broken after a 36-hour ordeal fleeing their city ​​west of kyiv. “We lived in the basement under constant shelling for 10 days,” Anna said. “We have seen horrible things. Mothers giving birth to their children in the basement. I didn’t want that to happen to me. »

As family after family crossed the tracks towing their luggage, other refugees passed in the opposite direction. They had arrived from Ukraine three hours earlier and were boarding a train for Budapest. Many, like vet Natalia Shulhan, 36, and her seven-year-old daughter Sonya, were calm, despite, in Natalia’s case, being on the road for a week after fleeing Chernihiv, a town near kyiv surrounded by Russian forces.

Natalia said: “Our train from Kyiv to Chop and across the border to Zahony took 17 hours. Sometimes it would stop for hours in the middle of nowhere and we were afraid of being bombed. My daughter is terrified and crying so we try to get as far away from the bombs and Ukraine as possible. The Russians behave like Nazis, like animals, I hate them. We are going to Budapest and then to Austria.

The difference in mood between the tense, exhausted and tense refugees arriving and those leaving hours later was palpable – and the reason immediately apparent.

From the moment the refugees got off the train, around 30 aid workers and volunteers rushed forward – hands outstretched – to carry their bags, help mothers with babies, provide food food, drinks, hygiene products, toys for children and sometimes just a hug. Among them were Israeli Jews and Arabs from One Middle East Agency in their black tops and yellow vests, Hungarian Lutheran aid workers, UNHCR aid workers and another local Hungarian charity. The Hungarian Red Cross offered medical care and World Central Kitchen had set up food.

Some volunteers were self-employed and not attached to aid agencies – Ukrainian speakers being in particular demand. Among them, Marina Doron, 35, mother of two children from Israel, born in Ukraine and arrived by plane a week ago. Marina said: “Yesterday a 20-year-old girl came with her sisters aged 14 and 4, so overnight she became a mother of two refugees. It was her first time abroad and she was scared – she didn’t know where to go. I was able to help with the next steps. Sometimes mothers just need help from another mother.

Another volunteer, Anmol Gupta, 29, from India, had studied to become a surgeon in Kharkiv and offered his services as a translator. He fled Ukraine 18 days ago on a motorbike, dodging fire like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, but had to abandon it after a Russian bullet ripped through the gas tank, missing him by inches . He found himself on a 27-hour train to the Hungarian border and decided to stay in Zahony to help “because people are panicking”. “I have a room 500 meters from here which I use to shower but I sleep here in the blue tent as the trains can arrive at any time and they need interpreters,” he said .

Standing next to it were two Britons from Weston-super-Mare, handing out teddy bears. David Fricker, 39, a train conductor, and Neil Sansam, 42, an engineer, had managed to get a free 52-seater coach which they packed with 7,000 stuffed animals and drove here. “We’ve been here for a week and have given out over 1,500 stuffed animals,” David said. “We try to bring joy to children who have been through a nightmare and make them feel like it’s a nice place.” As the Russian invasion entered its second month and the number of Ukrainians fleeing west exceeded 3.6 million, more than 325,000 people crossed into Hungary. They pass through five border crossings, of which Zahony is the busiest. There are supposed to be eight trains a day here, one every three hours, but only about five arrive and almost never on time. The last train was seven hours late last night, arriving at 1.15am and carrying the entire Shakhtar Donetsk FC youth team to eastern Ukraine.

During the first two weeks of the invasion, more than 3,000 refugees landed here each day, but their numbers have now fallen to a few hundred, and most take the first available train to Budapest before dispersing across the Europe. For those who want to shower and rest before leaving, the local high school has been turned into a shelter with classrooms that can accommodate up to 300 refugees on cots, although only 40 beds are currently occupied. A classroom had been turned into an emergency medical clinic by the Hungarian Red Cross, which calls it the H-HERO centre. Andras Molnar, 34, is responsible for a team of 12 people who operate between the station and the school – and sleep at the school. He said: “Around 20 refugees a day request medical assistance. Most are people with pre-existing chronic conditions who don’t have their medications with them, as well as mothers and children whose immune systems are weakened because they are exhausted and exhausted.

Meanwhile, the World Central Kitchen tent in front of the lobby is filling to the brim as another 80 refugees arrived on the 2:40 p.m. train and piled in alongside the midday train arrivals. Among them I found Ekataryn, whose family did not have biometric passports but had been issued 60-day temporary visas by the police, and who was devouring a cup of hot soup. Surrounded by her earthly possessions – reduced to a single suitcase, a school bag and a plastic bag – she said: “I cannot be calm because my husband cannot leave and the rest of my family is still in Mariupol and I I have no way of knowing if they are alive or dead. A lot of people can’t leave. You have to find someone who is likely to take you out, who has a car and gas because most cars are destroyed and there is no gas and even if you find all these things , it’s risky because they bomb all the time.

At the next table, 28-year-old mother Maria Tkachuk fed her 19-month-old son Vsevolod in the high chair. “We fled from kyiv on the first day of the war,” she said. “We lived in a village 150 kilometers from kyiv but yesterday we left at 7 a.m. and arrived after 31 p.m. We were trying to find the courage to leave because it’s difficult to travel with a baby. My parents and my husband had to stay, but I came to save my son and we will go to friends in Spain. I also spoke to Vita, 23, and Olya, 27, who had traveled from Kherson in the south. “My mother refuses to leave because they took my brother who is 25 to the war,” Olya said, as Vita sat with her head in her hands and cried. It turned out that Olya’s brother was Vita’s fiancée. “We have booked a hotel in Germany. We will have to figure it out from there.

Soon the train arrived for Budapest and the hall emptied. The arrivals board said the next train, due from Chop over the Ukrainian border at 5 p.m., was 70 minutes late.

I saw six-year-old Nazar Ulan riding a red plastic tractor he had freed from the children’s playground while his mother, Nadia, tried to keep an eye on him, take care of her other son, Vlad, three, and call her sister in Western Europe ahead of time.

Nadia, who had traveled from Rivne near the Belarusian border, said: “It’s my first time traveling abroad and I’m so scared. The Belarusian army is 200 kilometers from us. It’s terrifying when people want to kill you. Nazar didn’t want to leave without his father and said we could stay four days, no more. I don’t know how to tell her not to cry because I was crying too. But I tell myself that I must not collapse because who is going to take care of my children?

Ninety minutes later, the next train arrived from Ukraine. As the new refugees crossed the tracks, hands reached out. I checked on Nadia but she and her boys were gone. Another child commandeered the plastic tractor. Another mother was watching.

Additional reporting and translation by Georgina Ruszinko