Traditional family photos - mom, dad and children, all together looking at the camera. They are united by a common future, shared by all family members. But what happens in a situation when mom and children are forced to hide and flee from war, to seek safety in another country, and dad must stay. What are family portraits of this time like?

Having fled the regime of Belarus with our children, on the day Russia attacked Ukraine, we moved to Warsaw. Our daughter Agata ended up in the second grade with children from Ukraine. We came to a parent-teacher meeting and realized that we were the only family in which mom and dad were physically present.

Agata became friends with the Ukrainian children from her class, and she made a best friend, Sonya. Agata invited Sonya to her first birthday in Warsaw. After the birthday, little Sonya asked her mother:

⁃ Why is Agatha’s dad here and my dad is in Ukraine?

After these words told to us by Sonya's mother, we began documenting the lives of children and women from Ukraine in Warsaw.

Little Sonya is walking with her dad on the phone at the playground.

Varya and her dad are doing their homework on the phone, Masha and her dad are on the phone and with a psychologist who works with hypnosis, trying to restore vision that has fallen due to nervousness due to separation from her beloved dad.

This series of photographs captures the bonds between children and parents that cannot be broken even by physical separation. The men of these families choose to be with their children and wives even across thousands of kilometers.

Fathers are not physically with their families, but they are constantly connected via FaceTime. In the face of threat, every minute spent together is of immense value.