Almost 5 million people have fled Syria since 2011, seeking safety in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and beyond. Millions more are displaced inside Syria and, as war continues, hope is fading fast.

Russia is ready to accept compatriots in Crimea and eastern Ukraine: to distinguish them from Russians you can look at the color of a passport. But the country has other immigrants, whose great-grandfathers were forced to leave the Caucasus 150 years ago. It Circassians returning to their ancestral homeland after the war in Syria. As a result, there were more than 100,000 Russian nationals in Syria by the outbreak of war, as well as tens of thousands of mixed Russian-Syrian families. The conflict has since forced many of them to seek refuge in Russia.

Amount of refugees is relatively small because Russian immigration law is not that supportive as European is. "At the beginning of the war there were something like 1,000 Syrian refugees here, now we have 6,000" told us Svetlana Gannushkina, founder of Civic Assistance Committee in Moscow. There is also transit of Syrian refugees through Russia to Europe, though very small amount of them actually were using that.

However, they faced many challenges – from the language barrier to the problem of finding employment. The biggest problem is documents. To make a temporary registration, obtain the status of displaced person, you must pass a thick package of documents. Currently dizziness. How to collect them, leaving the war-torn country?

For decades, the Civic Assistance Committee has been the Only Russian NGO fighting for refugee welfare in the country. But the authorities now view them as "foreign agents", which will severely handicap their work.

On 23 March 2017 Fortune magazine included her in the list of 'the world's 50 greatest leaders. The citation reads: "In Putin's Russia, fighting for human rights isn't the safest career path. And yet Gannushkina, a 75-year-old mathematician, soldiers on. Her Civic Assistance Committee has helped over 50,000 people, mainly migrants and refugees, navigate Russia's byzantine legal system. Some of her successes: Pushing to amend refugee laws to grant citizenship to millions, and lobbying for the rights of refugee children to attend Russian schools. All this, despite her organization being labeled a 'foreign agent' by the Russian government."

In an apartment in the town of Noginsk, outside Moscow, and in Losino-Petrovskij, also nearby the Russian capital, refugees' kids can go to school. Their teachers, who also give classes in English and Arabic, are a mix of Syrians, Russians, and Syrian-Russians and they teach not just children, but even adults.

The Center is attended by almost 30 children (aged 6 to 18) at a time and they have classes 4 times a week. Refugees can learn Russian, English, Maths, all the main topics, as all the Russian kids do at school..Besides individual classes, there are group lessons in cultural studies, physics and drawing. Also, there is a psychologist who works with children having problems.

Children not only study: they play football, badminton, go on excursions and visit different cities. "What we do here I can call it integration" said Svetlana Gannushkina.