A temporary Home? Refugees from Ukraine in Poland and Moldova

Subject of the Talk

For the past year, solidarity with Ukraine has also had to be demonstrated in a very concrete way by helping people who have fled the country. In Germany, through the filter of the mass media, we mainly see the discussions about accommodation, social benefits and integration into schools and the labour market in our own country. This makes it easy to lose sight of the enormous challenges that countries directly bordering Ukraine, such as Poland and the Republic of Moldova, have to face simply because of the number of war refugees in relation to the size of their own populations.

The Republic of Moldova was mainly used as a transit country, but about 100,000 people who fled Ukraine are still staying in the small state with 2.6 million inhabitants. The social and economic conditions there are very tense anyway; another cause for concern is that Russia is trying in many ways to destabilise the former Soviet Republic of Moldova. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently about 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees registered in Poland.

We would like to learn from our discussion partners how the situation with people who have fled Ukraine has developed in their country, what concrete help and social solidarity looks like in their area of experience, how social and political-administrative support is organised, and how refugees can orient themselves under the given conditions. What do aid organisations and municipalities need to cope with the tasks? Which questions, problems and challenges are in the foreground in the individual countries for the refugees and those who support them? What are the perspectives?

We listen and talk to:

• Lilia Bulat, Chairperson of the ecumenical charity association “Moldavian Christian Aid“ (“Ajutorul Creştin din Moldova“), Chișinău/Republic of Moldova
• Maria Klaman, Spokesperson of the network of local authorities “Yes! For Poland” (Ruch Samorządowy “Tak! Dla Polski“), Sopot/Poland

Moderation:

• Marie von Manteuffel, Spokeswoman of the ZdK‘s section „European Cooperation and Migration“, Berlin