Poland Demonized Refugees. Now It’s Struggling to Integrate Them.

Numbers never tell the full story of a war. Often, however, they offer a good vantage point to look at the bigger picture. The key piece of data that actually tells the story of the future does not feature Ukraine at all—but, at the same time, illustrates the sheer scale of its tragedy. Since the Russian invasion, more than 2.3 million Ukrainian refugees have crossed the border into Poland.

This number in itself might not yet be worrisome. It becomes so, however, when contextualized. According to calculations made by the United Nations refugee agency and the Financial Times, Poland was ranked 101st globally in number of refugees it hosted in 2021. In a span of three weeks, it moved to number two. As of March 18, only Turkey had more refugees inside its borders.

The Poles’ initial response to the calamity of their neighbors was as heartwarming as it was shocking. Volunteers flooded the border, offering safe passage to any city in the country, while money, food, and medical supplies poured in the opposite direction. People mobilized to welcome refugees under their roofs and did not ask for any compensation. And all of that happened in a country that just six months earlier erected a border fence to protect itself from a few thousand Kurds and Afghans, forcing some of them to freeze to death in Poland’s pristine forests. Even if the optimism was there, very few dared to see it coming in such volumes.