By Olha Hembik | 2025-04-08

WARSAW -- At about 8pm on a recent Thursday in March, a bus from Ukraine arrived at a parking lot near the Stadion Narodowy subway station.

On board were 26 war refugees: a man in a wheelchair, mothers with young children and teenagers, and elderly women on crutches. One family brought their cat in a pet carrier, while another brought a small dog.

Waiting for the bus were Polish volunteers from Rubikus.HelpUA, Asymetryści and other organizations. They helped unload the refugees' bags. Coordinators read out names and assigned refugees to cars.

Some refugees went straight to the train station or airport. Others went to a dormitory for the night -- their transport was scheduled to leave the following day. These Ukrainians were traveling to Germany, Finland and Norway to obtain temporary asylum during the war.

Rubikus.HelpUA is a global team of volunteers that since 2022 has helped Ukrainians flee the country, including its Russian-occupied territories, for countries in Europe and farther afield.

The volunteer network supports refugees at every stage of their journey, including planning a route, selecting transportation and resolving issues with temporary lodgings.

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, more than 60,000 families have contacted Rubikus.HelpUA for assistance, and it has evacuated at least 50,000 individuals.

Refugees continue to flee

According to Rubikus.HelpUA volunteers, Ukrainians from the occupied territories evacuate through Russia, Belarus, Latvia and Estonia. This route is known as the "North Stream."

The organization said it receives evacuation requests from more than 70 families each day on the Rubikus.HelpUA website.

"After a request is submitted, a coordinator contacts the applicants and discusses the details of the route. He or she maintains constant contact and provides all the instructions," Anna Mirkowska of Warsaw, a volunteer coordinator with Rubikus.HelpUA, told Kontur.

Evacuating one person requires about €100 -- for travel, accommodations, food and pet food, if applicable, along the entire route to Europe.

The organization is funded by private donations. Evacuation costs, including travel through Russia and Belarus, are covered by the refugees themselves or the approximately 300 local volunteers.

At Rubikus.HelpUA, these volunteers are known only by their Telegram usernames, acting anonymously for security reasons.

The number of evacuations peaked in the summer of 2022, when eight evacuation buses arrived in Warsaw each week. Many other refugees made the journey on their own on regular buses.

"Either way, [Ukrainians] are traveling regularly -- from the front and from the occupied territories," said Mirkowska. "More and more people with disabilities, patients with advanced cancer, those on crutches -- namely, those for whom it is increasingly difficult to find a place in Poland, are coming."

Support from Rubikus.HelpUA currently allows two regular evacuation buses as well as a Medibus -- a bus specially equipped for transporting bedridden patients -- to arrive in Warsaw each month.

Life under the occupation

Leaving the occupation can take from several days to several months.

Natalia Zheleznyak (her surname has been changed for her safety) and her daughter fled from the occupied city of Hola Prystan in Kherson province the day after their house was bombed.

Their journey to Poland, which passed through Russia and Belarus, took two months.

"There's no longer a city. It suffered greatly during the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam," Zheleznyak told Kontur, referring to a blast in 2023 that international investigators blamed on Russia.

"Water reached the second floor of apartment buildings, remained for four months and has not yet completely receded," she said. "There's a stench everywhere."

"A lot of apartment buildings were destroyed and fell down. [Corpses] remain under these buildings," Zheleznyak continued. "There are no bushes or vegetation of any kind -- everything has turned into a moonscape. The city is screaming about the environmental disaster."

Zheleznyak referred to the destruction of the unique Solyanoe Lake: the once saline reservoir with healing waters has now become freshwater. The Russians organized their first line of defense in 2022 on the grounds of the sanatorium near the lake, digging trenches and installing military vehicles.

"But most terrible is that the Russians are deliberately destroying [Ukrainians]," she said. "A spotter drone hovers over the city at all times and directs artillery at residential areas."

"These bastards know very well that these areas are inhabited. But they need a 'gray zone' [a no man's land]," she said.

"[Informants] are passing along information, so they don't want 'eyes' there. There are very few residents left in Hola Prystan."

'We have no right to get tired'

Zheleznyak and her daughter traveled through Russian-occupied Crimea. They had to get Russian passports to follow this route.

"Before Simferopol, there was very intense 'screening' by Russian intelligence agencies and interrogations by border guards. They looked through every phone and used technology to ... recover deleted information," she said.

Interrogators found pro-Ukrainian viewpoints among her belongings, Zheleznyak said. "I thought it would all end badly, but a miracle happened -- they let us through."

In Simferopol, Russian volunteers met the travelers and put them up in a dorm.

The Ukrainian women went by train to Rostov, then to Belarus and then to the border with Poland.

Problems with their documents forced them to return to Belarus, crossing the Ukrainian border at the Domanove checkpoint. They arrived in Poland on an evacuation bus from Lviv. The women were traveling to Germany.

"If we take the overall figure, up to 1,000 refugees arrive in Warsaw every day," said Kajetan Jan Wróblewski, a coordinator with Asymetryści. "We serve 10% of them. Not everyone who arrives has contacts with organizations and knows whom to turn to."

He and his team meet the newcomers from Ukraine.

"There are fewer buses now, but they come all the time," Wróblewski told Kontur. "Unfortunately, these organizations have fewer financial resources now. But when mobilization is necessary, volunteers actively get involved."

"That is what happened when the Russians blew up the Kakhovka Dam and buses [with refugees] arrived every day."

Polish organizations intend to continue to help Ukrainian refugees, he said.

"We have no right to get tired," he said.