Help pours in for refugees

Reception centers spring up across Central and Eastern Europe, volunteers rush to borders

BRUSSELS — Authorities in Central and Eastern Europe have been scrambling to set up makeshift reception centers for a tide of refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.

The centers, often in the form of hastily erected tents, will assist in providing medical aid to Ukrainians along with accelerated processing of asylum papers.

Together with the official efforts, thousands of volunteers have driven to borders with donations of collected food, blankets, and clothes, and with offers of transport services and shelter.

On Feb 27, European Union interior ministers gathered for emergency talks on how to cope with the influx of refugees from Ukraine as tens of thousands of people flee across the border into Poland, Hungary, Romania and elsewhere.

At a meeting in Brussels, the ministers looked at ways to shelter people, how to manage the security challenges that the conflict poses to the EU’s external borders, and what kind of humanitarian support can be provided to Ukraine.

Those arriving at the borders are mostly women, children, and the elderly. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has banned the departure of men aged between 18 and 60 so they can take up arms against Russian forces.

The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, estimates that more than 500,000 people displaced by the fighting in Ukraine have fled the country.

Filippo Grandi of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees conveyed the latest update in a tweet on Feb 28.

The latest and still growing count had 281,000 people entering Poland, more than 84,500 in Hungary, about 36,400 in Moldova, over 32,500 in Romania, and about 30,000 in Slovakia, UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said.

In Germany, railway operator Deutsche Bahn said on Feb 27 it would offer free trips from Poland to Germany for refugees from Ukraine.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was receiving calls from people still in Ukraine pleading for food, money, hygiene items and blankets.

“We’re also receiving a growing number of calls from people in other countries, urgently seeking information on their families and friends inside,” the organization said on Twitter.

Romania will send fuel, bulletproof vests, helmets, food, and water worth 3 million euros ($3.8 million) to Ukraine and has offered to care for the wounded in hospitals, government spokesman Dan Carbunaru said on Feb 27.

Speaking from a border station on Feb 27, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that his government would send 100,000 liters of gasoline and diesel to Ukraine for use by paramedics, medical institutions, and disaster management.

For the refugees, the help extended across the region has been touching. Sitting with her teenage daughter in a hotel foyer in northern Romania, 38-year-old Viktoriya Smishchkyk broke down in tears as she recounted her departure from Ukraine.

“I could hear the sound of the fighting outside, it was very scary,” Smishchkyk, who is from Vinnitsya in central Ukraine, told The Associated Press from a hotel that is offering free accommodation to refugees.

“We left all our belongings behind, but they are material things — less important than the lives of our children,” she said.