Ukrainian refugees in Poland: A closer look at migration patterns

Following the release of statistics detailing from which Ukrainian regions the majority of refugees are relocating to Poland, allegations of betrayal surfaced among Ukrainians. It seems that inhabitants of regions deemed safer are leasing their apartments and moving to Poland to live on aid. This issue was discussed on Feb. 27 in a column for NV Business by Yevhen Kyrichenko, founder of the international employment agency Gremi Personal.

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"We performed and published a research exploring from which regions the most Ukrainians have arrived in Poland, and the next day, our monitoring service crashed [due to high traffic],” Kyrichenko wrote.

“It seems there was no media outlet that didn't publish this news. For several days, there was a lively discussion in news Telegram channels, people argued, recalling the cost of renting apartments in safe regions at the beginning of the war."

Top 10 regions with the most Ukrainians in Poland this winter included: Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytskyi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Volyn, Rivne, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, and Vinnytsia oblasts, according to Gremi Personal's statistics.

"People immediately saw betrayal here and were outraged that refugees from the safest regions of the country are in Poland,” noted Kyrichenko. “Allegedly, they rent out housing to Ukrainians from the east and then live luxuriously in Poland. I want to shed light on this geographical nuance. There's no betrayal here."

Gremi Personal experts studied the top 10 regions by the number of Ukrainians in Poland at the start of the full-scale war, to clarify the situation.

"In the spring of 2022, most Ukrainians arrived from Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kherson, Kyiv, Poltava, Lviv, Mykolaiv, and Vinnytsia regions,” Kyrichenko explained.

“As you can see, people were indeed seeking refuge in Poland."

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Traditionally, for the last thirty years, Ukrainians mainly from western regions have moved to Poland for work. Geographical proximity and limited opportunities to earn a decent living prompted the move to Europe. The beginning of the full-scale war changed this trend, as people were forced to flee from the east and south of the country for safety reasons.

During two years of war, many people have managed to get their lives in order: some moved to other countries, some returned to Ukraine.

"Mostly, those Ukrainians who remained in Poland are eager to work and return to Ukraine to spend their earnings, as has always been the case,” Kyrichenko added.

“And our research confirms this hypothesis. Those ready to learn new complex languages, take courses, and eventually assimilate moved to more developed EU countries. They are still receiving payments, but how long this will last is yet to be seen."

There were 750,000 officially employed Ukrainians in Poland by the end of 2023 —a huge figure that positively impacts the Polish economy. And thanks to the Ukrainians, Poland today has the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, according to Kyrichenko.

73% of Ukrainians, when asked where they plan to move further from Poland, responded that they do not intend to do so. 11% of Ukrainians in Poland plan to move to Germany, half as many to the Netherlands and Italy, with a few opting for other European countries.

"We surveyed almost one and a half thousand Ukrainians in various regions of Poland and discovered another interesting fact—the number of Kyiv residents in Poland is less than 1%," Kyrichenko noted, adding that if Ukraine receives less weaponry than needed, Russia will intensify its offensive, and the number of Ukrainians in Europe will significantly increase.

740,000 Ukrainians in Poland were officially employed as of August 2023.

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