Poland feels the strain of Ukrainian refugee crisis
Of the estimated 3 million Ukrainian refugees who have fled from Russia's invasion of their homeland, nearly 2 million of them have sought safety in Poland.
The massive surge of people has created a challenge for all of the countries housing them, but none more so than Poland, which has received about 60 percent of the arrivals. Yahoo News spoke to Rafal Kostrzynski, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Poland, about how the country is starting to feel the strain of the Ukrainian refugee crisis.
Video Transcript
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RAFAL KOSTRZYNSKI: 1.7 million of new arrivals would be a burden from whatever country you can find on a map. Be it Poland or United States of America or whatever. So if you ask me whether there is a strain already, yes there is. There is, absolutely. Despite the fact that Polish people, demonstrators, in amazing solidarity towards all the refugees from Ukraine. Such a situation that is ongoing and lasts already since the 24th of February, it's definitely something that is energy draining. And yeah, the fatigue syndrome is kicking in already. So more assistance will be needed because there will be more arrivals.
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I very recently spoke to a manager of one of the reception points close to [INAUDIBLE], the crossing point. And she said that in the first days of the conflict, there are lots of goodwill people who are coming either to deliver some sort of basic humanitarian assistance like diapers, hygiene items, and stuff like this. Bread, food, and so on and so on.
But now, when I visited this place it was exactly on the night of March, the place was almost empty. I mean, there were people inside. Ukrainians mostly, women and children. As far as the local population is concerned, there was almost nobody. There were of course volunteers visibly tired and exhausted. But without any substantial support from other actors.
When I spoke to the paramedics in [? Cordova, ?] also a reception point very close to the border, they said that they had abundance of medicines of one kind, but a complete lack of medicines of another kind. So these systemic gaps are now very visible. And they need to be addressed very, very urgently.
The post code of humanitarian assistance depends on what authorities decide to do. So it's their responsibility. And more sustainable approach with multisectoral approaches is definitely needed now, because you cannot put such a huge burden just on local authorities and local governments because they are simply not prepared to deal with such big problems. They don't have the required capacity. It will require some kind of assistance, burden sharing from other countries. From international involvement in the form of either humanitarian assistance or relocating some people to different countries to share the burden is, of course, necessary.
We see, of course, that some countries they agreed to take some Ukrainian refugees from Providence to alleviate the burden on Polish shoulders. But we see that every day, day by day there are new arrivals. So more involvement will definitely be needed.
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