An adult female hugs a child outdoors, both wearing dark blue puffer jackets with pink and navy accents, under natural light during what appears to be autumn or spring. 3:02
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The 11-year-old who crossed Ukraine alone

A red backpack, his passport and a phone number written on his hand. That's all Hassan carried when he crossed Ukraine by train at 11, with no one beside him. more

His mother couldn't go with him. Her own mother was 84 and, in her words, "can't move on her own." Near their city, Russian forces were shelling a nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, and it had caught fire. So she sent him on alone. "I got my son on a train," she said, "sent him to the Slovak border."

A young person with short dark hair, wearing a hoodie, looks up and to the side. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
His mother had to stay behind, so Hassan, 11, boarded a train for Slovakia by himself.

Hassan set out from Zaporizhzhia and rode nearly 1,200 kilometers across the country, more than a whole day on the train. At the border, the Slovak guards took over. His mother says they "met him, helped him, led him by the hand" and let him through to the other side.

In Slovakia, volunteers met him. They kept him warm, gave him food and water, and took him to Bratislava. Then the number on his hand did its job. Authorities used it to reach his relatives, and Hassan was back with family.

An adult female hugs a child outdoors, both wearing dark blue puffer jackets with pink and navy accents, under natural light during what appears to be autumn or spring. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
A red backpack, his passport and a phone number written on his hand.

Back in Ukraine, his mother sent her thanks to every guard and volunteer who had looked after him. "I am very grateful that you saved my child's life," she said. She asked for one more thing, a safe place for all of Ukraine's children.

When his story was first told, Hassan was one of more than two million people who had fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began. More than 140,000 of them had reached Slovakia.

A person with glasses holds a small fluffy dog close to their face. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Hassan was one of more than two million people who had fled Ukraine since the invasion began.

Many who hear about him call him brave, and they save their warmest words for his mother. She had her own words for the country at the end of his long train ride. "People with big hearts live in your small country."

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