For these family members ripped aside by conflict in Ukraine, cellphone messages deliver hope and despair

Lviv, Ukraine — In the midst of a days-long, chaotic cross-country train ride to the northwestern city of Lviv, near Ukraine’s border with Poland, a terrible realization dawned on Marina.

The 54-year-old carer, who managed to evacuate an orphanage in a besieged industrial town in the eastern Luhansk province, had no way to return to her own family.

“And now I am all alone,” Marina told CNN from a daycare center-turned-shelter in Lviv, where she and the children from her orphanage were camped out. “I have left my own (adult) children to save the children in the orphanage.”

CNN is not disclosing Marina’s full name because of the risks to her family who have not been evacuated.

The fracturing of families underpins many of the stories of displacement in Ukraine, where Russia’s violent attempts to wrest control of territory in the country’s east, south and center from Ukrainian authorities have leveled entire neighborhoods.

Millions of people are still trapped in besieged cities with…

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