The father fights in the war, the mother looks after the remains of the possessions. Ukrainian teenagers in Poland. "These kids have nothing"

Ukrainian refugees are not only mothers with children, but also teenagers who board trains and buses going to Poland alone. One of them is a boy who fled the country two days before the Russian shelling in the Dnipro. "These kids have lost everything - security, friends, family. They have nothing, and they have no faith that it will be otherwise."

The first anniversary of the outbreak of Russian aggression in Ukraine is approaching, and refugees fleeing the war on buses and trains continue to disembark at Polish train stations every day. The vast majority of people seeking shelter in Poland are women with children, but there are also teenagers who are a less noticeable group.

A boy who left Ukraine two days before the Dnipro shelling

— His father, for obvious reasons, could not leave, and his mother looks after the remains of the belongings, which can be saved. This boy ended up at the West Railway Station in Warsaw and we were looking for foster care for him, a place where he could stay safely so that he would not be taken advantage of by cruel people. These kids have lost everything – security, friends, and family. They have nothing, they also have no faith that it will be different.

We remember the great upheaval that Poles underwent a year ago. — It was really tens of thousands of people. All kinds of things were brought – clothes, food, and everything that someone thought would be needed. During this uprising, the media also talked a lot about it, many people on their social media reported that they had somehow joined the help – that they had become volunteers or that they were giving something.

I spent the first two months of the war helping at the railway stations, says one of the Polish activists.

- It seemed to me that all Poles are there and help, so apart from the stations, nothing happens anywhere. But because children from Ukraine came under my care, I had to find a moment when I would go out with them to the park or the old town. I went to the city and was very surprised, because it turned out that this city is alive and that not everyone lives at the station. It was my first contact with reality.

Now we have returned to the state we were in a year ago, before the war. — It seems that Poles do not like helping. I'm not saying about everyone. Many Poles are still wondering how to help mothers with small children, because they are now under our care. They are very brave. They don't scream, they don't cry, they don't ask for help. They grit their teeth and wait for the end of the war. Each of them says, “I want to go home.”

“Before, these bad comments were lost in a sea of ​​good”

According to the activist, such negative voices appeared with the influx of the first refugees. They just weren't heard then. — Previously, there were a lot of these positive comments, and the bad ones were lost in the sea of ​​good. Now, people just don't react when someone denies helping.

It is worth paying attention to the situation of Ukrainian children in Polish schools. — I hear a lot of bad things about how Ukrainian children are treated by Polish children. It really takes just one hooligan, one person who incites such an atmosphere of hatred and a few people who respond with silence, i.e., tacit permission to hurt someone.

Poland is one of the countries that are most involved in helping

The most common forms of support provided by Poles are collections. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, as many as 60 percent. Poles shared food, clothes or other necessities with people in need.

Online fundraisers are also popular. 40 percent of the funds were donated to the account of charitable organizations helping Ukraine in this difficult time. of us. This group includes the largest number of Poles living in large cities and the most affluent.

Another popular form of support is the boycott of products from Russia. Every fourth Pole, regardless of gender (25%), does this. In addition, 14 percent of us are directly involved in collections, acting as a volunteer, and 7 percent offered the residents of Ukraine a temporary stay in their apartment.

85 percent of enterprises do not observe significant changes in the employment status of employees from Ukraine. 47% are of the opinion that if not people living in Poland, the Polish government would not have been able to help Ukrainian refugees at all

54 percent of respondents are convinced that the government would not be able to cope with the refugees without the help of Poles. large enterprises, 50 percent. medium and 46 percent. small, according to a study by Leviathan Confederation in Poland.