But it is the journey from Krakow, Poland, to Kyiv that gave me the most insight into how much has changed in Ukraine since I last visited in February, just before the Russian invasion began.
Vladimir Putin’s aggression has turned Ukraine into a country in motion.
The figures are staggering. There are an estimated 5 million Ukrainians who have fled their country. According to the United Nations refugee agency, as of June, at least 7 million Ukrainians had become internal refugees, with the number soaring as Russia destroys more cities, towns and villages in eastern Ukraine. Putin’s war crimes have driven as many as one-third of Ukrainians from their homes.
Poland is now home to an estimated 3 million Ukrainian refugees. Krakow, a spectacularly beautiful city with a medieval core and a castle that housed Polish kings, is host to at least 200,000, most of them women and children. I met several, and heard their appreciation for the generosity of volunteers who have helped them settle.
The resilience of the Ukrainians and the openness of the Poles have both been stunning. But what I was told over and over by Polish volunteers I met was this: “We are helping them not only because they are brave, but because, if they were not fighting the Russians in Ukraine, we would be fighting them here.”
In Krakow, I met Viktoriia Mudritska, who was a director at the historical museum in Chernihiv, a midsize city located less than 40 miles from the Russian border, which was attacked on the first day of the war. She told me how she hid during the bombardment with three friends and four dogs in a friend’s small basement for 10 days until Ukrainian soldiers told them they had to leave. The house was destroyed the day after they left. “We didn’t believe this could happen,” she recalls. “Then you have to accept it.”
A practicing Buddhist, she stayed for a while in a Buddhist Center near the Polish border that was sheltering 100 refugees. Then she went to stay with friends in Poland and “began to send CVs everywhere.” She had worked at the Chernihiv museum on a history of Jews in that city; her CV caught the eye of the head of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, and she was hired to work on educational programs.
Viktoriia speaks of the special challenge that faces displaced Ukrainians abroad and at home. “I can only plan for a few days,” said Viktoriia. “Who knows what will be in our future?”
It is this terrible uncertainty, as the war drags on, that haunts Ukrainians, and indeed the whole of Europe. How will things end? Will they end? Will the United States and Western Europe finally send Ukraine the long-range rocket launchers, artillery and antimissile systems they need to drive the invaders back to their own soil?
The awfulness of this uncertainty was in full view as I traveled to the Polish border town of Przemysl to catch the train to Kyiv.
There are no flights into Ukraine anymore. So hundreds of Ukrainian women and children were huddled, awaiting a train that was four hours late. The good news was that young Polish high school volunteers in yellow vests rushed to help old ladies carry their baggage, while American volunteers working for World Food Kitchen handed out hot homemade soup and sandwiches in carry bags.
When the train finally pulled out at 3 a.m. for the 12-hour ride, I felt incredibly lucky, knowing that I had a home to return to in the U.S. and could leave the war zone at will. But I remembered the mantra I heard over and over in Poland: “They are fighting so we do not have to.”
This Ukrainian limbo cannot last forever. Either we and the Europeans give Ukraine the weapons to end it or we will be drawn into Putin’s madness along with Ukraine.
