It was unprovoked, but this is what Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed on Ukraine.

As the sun came up this morning, a missile striking an industrial park in Western Ukraine.

A helicopter assault on an airport outside of Kiev, close, intense fighting, and there are civilian casualties.

That was 24, yeah, 24 of the february. The war started with Thursday morning, yeah.

And the stage was too late for people to do anything.

Anyola Olediti is a 26 year old Irish citizen born in Nigeria. She's been studying medicine in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumi, near the border with Russia since 2019.

Any as her friends call her, enjoyed going to school in Sumi. But then Russia invaded Ukraine. The two countries went to war and everything changed.

I remember getting a phone call from my Ukrainian friend saying, oh my god, it's happening.

Any lived alone in a two bedroom apartment in Sumi.

I remember looking at the window, airspace was closed, so I was like, oh my god, I can't go to Ireland.

My goodness, so I was like, alright, looked at the window, people were running off and down. There was cues at the ATM, cues at pharmacies, cues at shopping centers.

Any knew that she had to get out of town, but it wasn't going to be easy.

Transstation, buses, taxes weren't running. Went to the train station, absolutely packed. No movement whatsoever. People were just...

What it offered there was two cases, and no one was moving anywhere. Then, as of the next day, then, that was when the line was blown.

The train stopped moving in Sumi, where it completely caught off. Completely caught off from being able to go anywhere.

So that's how a lot of students end up being stranded in Sumi.

Ukraine has long attracted foreign students to its universities because of affordable tuition and a cheap cost of living for a European country.

Before the war broke out, there were around 76,000 foreign students in the country. According to the BBC, almost a quarter of them are from Africa.

Many others are black Europeans, just like any. And suddenly, many were stuck, miles away from home in a war zone.

Like in Sumi, in Ukraine, there are students, thousands of them trapped because the bridges have been destroyed by bombs and everything, so they can't move.

As the situation in Sumi grew more tense over the last couple of weeks, any moved into a nearby dorm for international students, where she felt safer.

But the dorm quickly became overcrowded.

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