Ukrainian Refugees in Poland Queue for Work Permits as Border Crossings Ease

On Monday morning, hundreds of Ukrainians stood in line outside the national stadium in Warsaw, the ground where Poland's national soccer team plays. They were there to register for work permits, the paperwork that would let them take jobs for as long as the war keeps them from home.

Tatiana Shmaliy was in the line with friends. A beautician in her home town of Vinnitsya, in central-western Ukraine, she described a mixed welcome. People in Poland, she said, had been very good about accommodating them, but finding work was hard, and she and her friends were looking for any job at all.

Poland has taken in more refugees than any other country since Russia invaded on Feb. 24: about 2.1 million people. It was already home to the largest Ukrainian community in the region, around 1.5 million people before the war. Most of those fleeing have crossed into the European Union through Poland, Slovakia, Romania or Hungary, according to U.N. refugee agency data.

The flow across the border was slowing. Border authorities reported that the number of people entering the EU continued to fall on Monday, though they cautioned that fighting could escalate and bring a new surge. Paweł Szefernaker, Poland's deputy interior minister, said in a radio interview that fewer people had been arriving in recent days. He added that, because of Russian aggression, another wave could come at any moment and the country had to be prepared.

The scale of displacement is large. The U.N. refugee agency says some 10 million Ukrainians, out of a population of around 45 million, have been forced from their homes. Of those, 3.4 million have left the country, mostly women and children, and mostly for EU member states. Ylva Johansson, the EU's migration commissioner, warned on Monday that some refugee children could be at risk of trafficking. She pointed to Ukraine's high number of orphans, and of children born to surrogate mothers who have not been collected by their parents.

Across the region, governments and employers are trying to make room for the newcomers. Schools have started placing Ukrainian children in classes, and companies have offered jobs, though many refugees do not speak the local languages. In Romania, which has received more than 500,000 Ukrainians, a large recruiting platform has added a "Ukrainian friendly jobs" tag and lets companies post vacancies free of charge. In the Czech Republic, which hosts some 270,000 refugees, Ukrainians holding a special visa can be hired without a work permit from Monday. The Interior Ministry has issued more than 205,000 of those visas.

The war itself continued. British intelligence said on Monday that Russian forces advancing on Kyiv from the northeast had stalled. In Mariupol, which is besieged, Ukraine rejected Moscow's call for its defenders to lay down their arms. Moscow describes its "special military operation" as aimed at disarming Ukraine and removing dangerous nationalists; Western governments say President Vladimir Putin launched an aggressive war of choice against a democratic state that posed no threat to Russia.

At Medyka, Poland's busiest crossing along its roughly 500-kilometer (310-mile) border with Ukraine, refugees arriving on Monday spoke of bombings and aerial attacks on their way out. Natasha, 46, from the Poltava region, said she planned to work for a while and then see what happens. When it is quiet, she said, she will go back and help rebuild Ukraine. Her son and her husband stayed behind.

For now, the questions are practical ones: whether permits come quickly, whether jobs match people's skills and language, and whether the easing at the border holds or gives way to another surge.