EU volunteers have hands full as the invasion refugees keep pouring in

A growing tide of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion streamed into central Europe on Thursday as volunteers and officials stepped up efforts to process arrivals whose numbers a UN official said had topped the 1-million mark.

With Russian forces intent on advancing towards Kyiv and bombing some other Ukrainian cities into wastelands, the UN refugee agency also said the conflict looked set to trigger Europe’s largest refugee crisis this century.

In the week since President Vladimir Putin ordered the biggest attack on a European state since 1945, most escaping Ukrainians have crossed into Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, member countries of the EU, which  Kyiv wants to join.  

Authorities and volunteers across central European border crossings have pitched tents to provide medical aid and process asylum papers and sought to make the entry as smooth as possible for weary Ukrainians’ harrowing journeys to flee war.

“I’ve been to Bangladesh. This is as bad as it was [coping with refugees] in Bangladesh,” said Morteza Eshghparast, a volunteer for Help Dunya, a German NGO, while waiting in line to re-enter Ukraine at the Medyka crossing, Poland’s busiest, along its border of about 500km with Ukraine.

Volunteers stationed there handed out hot beverages and sandwiches to weary refugees, some of whom travelled for days to escape the fighting.

Poland, whose expat Ukrainian community of about 1-million is the region’s largest, has about 575,000 Ukrainian refugees so far, officials estimate. Nearly 100,000 crossed on Wednesday alone.

With men of conscription age obliged to stay and help in the defence, mostly women and children have crossed into the EU from regional crossings.

“We are from Lviv and we decided to flee because we often heard air raid alarms,” said Natasha, 23, who fled with her mother in a car and waited two days on the Slovak border. “We took our possessions and fled.”

Russia says its actions in Ukraine are a “special operation” not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its neighbour’s military capabilities and capture what it calls dangerous nationalists.

At the Sighetu Marmatiei crossing in Romania, to where officials said more than 139,000 Ukrainians have fled, Dmitry Rubanov waited with binoculars after travelling from London to meet his sister Natasha Borzenkova and her two daughters. They had fled from the heavily shelled city of Kharkiv.

“I had to leave my husband behind because he is not allowed to go through the border and I had to leave my parents behind because we have older relatives who they have to look after,” Borzenkova said after reuniting with her brother. “A lot of families had to be separated.”

Across central Europe, where memories of Moscow’s dominance after World War 2 run deep, thousands of volunteers have converged on the borders, bringing food, clothes and blankets.

Many have opened their homes and hotels or offered vacant apartments to displaced Ukrainians. A church in Warsaw said it would start celebrating  Sunday mass in Ukrainian, and a Polish cinema chain offered free daily showings for refugee children.

In Warsaw, city officials have prioritised finding places to sleep for refugees, saying that 11 trains carrying Ukrainians from the border arrived overnight.

“We’re focusing on making sure that hundreds of people aren’t forced to stay at the train stations,” said city council spokesperson Monika Beuth-Lutyk. “Organising child care, schools and assistance to find jobs will come later.”

Hungary has set up a government working group to provide jobs for Ukrainians as there are nearly 80,000 vacancies in Hungary and the shortage is especially serious in construction, said Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said on Thursday. 

Hungarian police data show that about 127,000 refugees entered Hungary from Ukraine since February 24.

Reuters