Civil crisis management in Poland : the first weeks of the relief in Russian war on Ukraine

Abstract

Two months into the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started on 24 February 2022, the UN Refugee Agency reports that over 5 million people have fled Ukraine,1 while the International Organization for Migration estimates that the number of internally displaced people (IDP) has reached another 7 million.2 Poland alone welcomed almost 3 million people seeking safety, which translates into approximately 56% of all the refugees.3 Those numbers already largely surpass the last “refugee crisis” in Europe in 2015, when a record 1.3 million people, mostly Syrian, reached the Continent.4 Back then, Angela Merkel’s temporary “open doors” policy that resulted in 1.1 million people arriving in Germany within two years was perceived as a huge gamble.5 It is not difficult to see that the general number of displaced people as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine has no precedent. We must also note, however, the scale and the intensity of the influx of people from Ukraine to bordering countries, in particular to Poland:6 on 24 February, 30,000 people crossed the border with the country, but at the peak of what we can describe now as the first refugee wave of the Russia–Ukraine war, over 100,000 people per day would meet border guards at the crossings in Korczowa, Medyka, Zosin, or other towns.7 This peak alone lasted a whole week – the second week of the war. Given the staggering numbers I mentioned above, I would like to present a partial outlook on the emergence, forms of functioning, and management of an early humanitarian and relief response in Poland, focusing on the first two–three weeks of the invasion. My perspective here is three-fold: first, I write from the position of a participant in the humanitarian response, having been volunteering at the Polish–Ukrainian border, as well as volunteering in Warsaw and online (more of this form of volunteering later). Second, I am only a small piece of a large and heterogenous group of people who quickly became engaged in relief work; to present a reliable and broad understanding of the situation from the early days of the conflict, I draw from a dozen or so informal conversations with fellow volunteers, conducted throughout our work and in preparation for this article.8 Last but not least, I would like to underline that while this article is written by necessity from the position of “helpers,” it on no account means that “we” are the real subjects that need to be distinguished by our work. The real heroes and heroines are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women, children, men, elderly, non-binary, and queer persons who have been risking their lives in a search for freedom, safety, and agency. This article is theirs.