As anti-Ukrainian sentiment grows, a Polish women’s shelter for Ukrainian refugees fights for survival
KRAKOW, Poland (AP) — When Nastya Podorozhnya’s relatives fled the war in Ukraine for neighboring Poland, volunteers welcomed them with open arms. Podorozhnya, 29, was already living in Poland when the invasion began. But days before Russia’s full-scale attack on Feb. 24, 2022, she drove back to Ukraine to bring her sister and nieces out.
Returning to Poland with the first wave of refugees, she saw the extraordinary kindness of Polish volunteers — and recognized a danger. Ukrainian women accepting help from strangers, she said, could easily fall into the hands of traffickers. That realization led her to found Martynka, a helpline and support group for female Ukrainian refugees fleeing gender-based violence.
Four years later, Martynka is struggling to survive. International funding has shifted elsewhere. Anti-Ukrainian sentiment has moved from the political fringe into the mainstream. And Poland still has no long-term integration strategy for the roughly one million Ukrainians who stayed.
The shelter itself is easy to miss: a two-bedroom apartment in central Krakow. Since the war began, it has sheltered more than 100 women and children. Residents receive help escaping abusive partners, along with access to medical care, psychological counseling, jobs and housing.
“It often starts with me having tea in this very kitchen with the women and they tell me what happened to them and I say, ‘girl, same,’” Podorozhnya told The Associated Press, referring to the night a man tried to rape her on a street in Poland in 2016.
As she and her colleagues scramble to raise money, she said, donation appeals often bring a flood of online abuse. “It’s because I’m Ukrainian,” she said.
The climate around her has changed dramatically since 2022, when Poland embodied Europe’s welcome to refugees. Poland remains one of Ukraine’s most important wartime allies, but that official solidarity has not shielded refugees from a changing public mood.
In the first weeks of the war, around 3.5 million Ukrainians crossed into Poland, according to the United Nations. Polish families opened their homes, volunteers worked around the clock at train stations, and the government granted refugees access to jobs and social benefits. By the end of 2022, the refugee population had stabilized at roughly 1 million. More than 70 percent found work, and a Deloitte study estimated that they contributed 2.7 percent of Poland’s gross domestic product in 2024.
Yet as the war dragged on, the welcome wore thin. In research published this year, Ukrainian migrants interviewed by Olena Babakova, a researcher at Warsaw’s Vistula University, said anti-Ukrainian feeling intensified during the 2025 Polish presidential campaign, when hostility toward Ukrainians became common ground across parties rather than a far-right niche.
Karol Nawrocki, the national-conservative candidate who won the presidency, promised legislation giving Polish citizens priority over Ukrainians in public services. His liberal opponent, Rafał Trzaskowski, proposed restricting child welfare benefits for Ukrainians. Historical grievances resurfaced too. In June, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided to name a military unit after a Ukrainian paramilitary organization accused of massacring Poles during World War II, sparking outrage in Poland and prompting Nawrocki to withdraw a state honor awarded to Zelenskyy.
“It’s not only negative feelings,” Babakova said. “Ukrainians really experience hostile conversations and attacks.” Polish police recorded 180 Ukrainian citizens as victims of prejudice-motivated crimes by mid-July, a figure that signaled a sharp rise in such incidents. After several widely reported attacks on Ukrainians, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in late July that “we must wage war on violence and hatred.”
State support has also been shrinking. The Polish government has steadily cut refugee assistance, arguing that many Ukrainians have stabilized. Poland’s ombudsman has warned that the cuts fall hardest on women with several children, older people and those with disabilities or chronic illnesses. Since Ukrainian men between 23 and 60 are generally barred from leaving the country, single mothers are disproportionately represented among those in need.
Yuliia Repenko from the Ukrainian House, a Warsaw-based organization that helps Ukrainians, said the group was “increasingly supporting people who are particularly vulnerable to exclusion.”
Government officials defend the approach. Katarzyna Nowakowska, Poland’s deputy minister for family, labor and social policy, told the AP that the most vulnerable applicants still receive direct state help and that anyone else needing support should contact social workers.
International donors, meanwhile, have moved on. U.N. refugee agency data show funding for Ukrainians has dropped steadily since 2022; this year, only half of the agency’s identified needs are financed, compared with 94 percent in 2022.
“Financial supporters have moved on from helping Ukrainian refugees, but the war is still ongoing,” said Sonia Novytska, a Martynka helpline worker. “If anything, it has become deadlier since the start.”
Martynka received about 1,800 requests for help last year, and staff expect the caseload to rise. The calls are no longer only from women fleeing violence, Novytska said, but also from mothers who cannot afford food or rent.
With the war dragging on and no coordinated national strategy, Martynka has effectively become an ad-hoc safety net — one that is increasingly fragile.
Podorozhnya said she understands why some Poles have grown tired. But she wants them to see what the loss of Martynka would mean: more women on the streets, more children in crisis, more people with nowhere else to go.
“What Poles need to understand is that we are helping the people that could otherwise become homeless in their neighborhoods, the people who might start abusing substances out of despair they can’t make ends meet,” she said. “Martynka does the job of the Polish state.”