Today, all of Ukraine’s communities are fighting to protect the country from Russian aggression. This includes the Roma, an ethnic group that faces particular challenges in relation to their place in society. The integration of Roma, both now and after the end of the war, will be a key test regarding the success of a new Ukraine.

Ukraine is home to more than 100 national minorities and communities. Members of these communities are victims of Russia’s full-scale aggression just as much as the members of the majority population. The communities in Ukraine also participate in defending Ukraine against the Russian aggressors. Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Hungarians, Roma, Koreans, Romanians, Moldavians, and individuals from various other communities are fighting on the frontline. They often stand together with Jews and Muslims, who are defending the country alongside their Christian and Atheist neighbours.

Ukraine has the second-largest HIV epidemic in Europe after Russia. Those refugees who fled the full-scale invasion to Poland with HIV have been forced to seek treatment and adjust to different approaches to the disease. In the end, the experience can provide lessons on how to better help those afflicted with the disease.

When Anna Aryabinska fled from Kyiv in March 2022 with her ex-partner’s children, she had little idea that she would end up supporting not only his family, but many HIV-positive Ukrainians in Poland. Until Russia’s full-scale invasion, Aryabinska had been an activist for the Ukrainian organisation Positive Women, supporting women with HIV. Now she is one of a group of volunteers assisting fellow Ukrainian refugees to keep taking medication for HIV, as well as integrate into healthcare systems in European countries which have very different epidemic profiles and standards of treatment.

In 2021, thousands of people from the Middle East and North Africa crossed the Belarusian border into EU countries such as Poland. Polish activists who offered support say that emergency prepared them for the next refugee crisis, from Ukraine in 2022. While the Polish state’s approach dramatically shifted between the two situations, NGOs and volunteers leaned on the same skills and resources to help people on the move.

Europe’s active response to the millions of Ukrainian refugees who fled Russia’s invasion has often been viewed as a positive approach to migration policy. Despite this, the future remains uncertain for these new residents. Government decisions across the continent will now play a role in deciding not just the economic future of the EU but Ukraine itself.

Russia’s decision to launch a full-scale war in Ukraine has resulted in millions of Ukrainians fleeing the country via its western border. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of April 2023, 8,174,189 people have been recorded as refugees from Ukraine across Europe. Exactly 5,044,039 of them registered for temporary protection schemes in Europe.

Poland used various discursive practices to shape diverging social perceptions about two groups of migrants/refugees entering Poland: those crossing from Ukraine, on the one hand, and those crossing from Belarus on the other. The Polish government’s portrayal of the crisis on the Poland-Belarus border as a hybrid war, whilst helping Ukrainian refugees, was presented as being in line with Poland’s national interests.

Poland has been witnessing two very different waves of migration on its eastern border: the arrival of millions of Ukrainian refugees since February 2022, and the arrival of people, predominantly from the Middle East and Africa, through Belarus since June 2021. These two groups are quite different in their nature and origin and arouse different reactions both on part of the Polish authorities and broader society. While those fleeing Ukraine have been warmly welcomed, people trying to enter Poland via Belarus have been predominantly denied the right to apply for asylum and pushed back into Belarusian territory.

One third of the Ukrainian population is displaced – over eight million abroad and at least five and a half million internally, constituting the biggest forced displacement in Europe since the Second World War. Curiously, around one third of those who had fled after February 24th 2022 have already returned, with the International Organisation for Migration putting the number as high as six million. Yet, they returned, against all odds.

The full-scale war in Ukraine and the refugee influx that followed sent shockwaves throughout Europe. However, a large number of refugees coming back also caught many by surprise. They returned despite the war still raging throughout the country, and despite receiving an unprecedentedly warm welcome. Myself also being puzzled, I looked for answers and found a couple of think tank papers. The analysts meticulously present statistics and draw maps and graphs. There are survey data responses and discussions on the size of welfare payments, the distribution of housing and other resources for the refugees. Still, I am not convinced. When examining the statistics of millions, a person inevitably gets lost. Hence, I set out to look at the individual behind the digits.  

Interview with Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv. Interviewer: Nikodem Szczygłowski.

When Russia started its open aggression against Ukraine on February 24th, millions of Ukrainians started to flee from the rockets that were now falling on their homes and cities. Clearly, the most obvious direction of escape was to the West, and Poland in particular. However, it was not so clear how Poland would react to this inflow of migrants. A huge conventional war in the 21st century in a neighbouring country was once something unimaginable. As a result, it was difficult for the nation to prepare.

The arrival of millions of Ukrainian refugees in Poland has resulted in an unprecedented humanitarian response from groups and individuals in Polish society. Yet the actual geographies of refugee reception differ significantly from their instrumentalised geopolitical representations by state leaders.

Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poland has received over 3.5 million arrivals from Ukraine according to the latest UNHCR reports. This is an exceptional number, and the country became, in the space of one month, the state with the second largest refugee population in the world, lauded domestically as well as internationally for its outpouring of support.

Thousands of Ukrainian refugees enter Romania daily through the border crossings and are met by an army of volunteers. Yet, there is no central command running these humanitarian operations. They are, for the most part, happening spontaneously, with officials, refugees and volunteers finding the best solution for each case through word of mouth or on social media. Not having a plan seems to be the best plan so far.

Since Russian tanks started rolling into Ukraine on February 24th, nearly half a million Ukrainian women, children and elderly people have crossed the border into neighbouring Romania. They have arrived either directly from their country or through Moldova. Although a far cry from the more than two million that already made it from Ukraine to Poland, this influx of refugees poses a great challenge to a country that is not exactly known for its robust social services or the organisational capacity of its administration. But, at least until now, things have gone much smoother than most would have thought.

As Poland has been one of the primary victims of the crisis on the EU’s eastern border, one would hope that this experience would make it reconsider its hitherto staunch opposition towards a robust, solidarity-based EU migration policy. Instead, the go-it-alone approach of the Polish government and its reliance on physical barriers and pushbacks have undermined Poland’s human rights record, and demonstrated a missed opportunity to show the full potential of inter-EU cooperation. The fact that the Union itself has done little to change Poland’s approach, and has failed to bring migration policy into the picture, poses serious moral questions and risks future vulnerability to migration weaponisation.

Safi sought refuge in Ukraine together with her children following the Kivu Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The process of legalising her family's residence was challenging, but made easier thanks to a helpful migrant community.