At a border town, Ukrainians arrive by train, and Poles rush to give them shelter and clothes

Przemyśl, POLAND As we wind down a highway on the way to the Polish border town of Przemyśl, an uncomfortable smog hangs in the sky as the sun begins to dip below the horizon.

“It’s from all the traffic going away and to the border,” says my driver, Ania. She has joined so many of her fellow Poles who in the past five days have been volunteering whatever service they can provide. For Ania, that means driving journalists towards the Ukrainian border to report on the humanitarian crisis surging at crossings like this one, and on the flipside offering lifts in the opposite direction toward cities further away from the war.

“There’s almost too many people offering lifts than need rides,” she said after hanging up with a person who had called earlier trying to arrange transportation for a family of Ukrainian refugees who’d arrived earlier Monday, but had since found someone else to volunteer. “We just want to help in any way we can.”

The UN reported Monday that in the five days since Russia invaded the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, at least 520,000 people have fled Ukraine to the surrounding countries of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova and Poland. It’s a number that keeps growing as Russian attacks on major cities have intensified.

Przemyśl is 20 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. The border has effectively moved to the train station, platforms 4 and 5. Though technically still in Poland, the two platforms now provide functions too dangerous to perform at the actual border. There are Polish officials inside to trace and debrief refugees arriving on trains — coming directly from Lviv, Kyiv, Odessa — but passports are not required.

Uliana, a volunteer with the Ukrainians in Poland Facebook group, tells as much to a frantic family who is concerned that their official paperwork has not gone through.

“You’ll have 15 days to file paperwork with Poland,” she informed a weary mom and dad with two blanket-clad children, each with their respective Elsa and Anna emblazoned on the back. “We’re not turning you back.”

Trains are running with frequent delays.When we first get to the station, there’s an anxious group of media, volunteers and onlookers gated off from the platform, watching for new arrivals.

A whistle sounds in the distance. Neon-vested volunteers who had been jumping around to stay warm in the minus-7 chill are now jumping to get in position with their chocolate bars, hot tea and blankets.

Children and their mothers are given first priority to offload from the train and with the help of camouflage-uniformed firefighters standing at the foot of the doors, toddlers and timid teens are plucked one by one onto the platform.

After taking a few minutes to drink some water and tuck away extra protein bars into suitcases and backpacks, they’re ushered indoors to be processed by Polish authorities.

Arriving refugees can be picked up at the front of the station by pre-arranged rides from family, friends or aid agencies. On the far side of the road, there’s an understood system that Poles wanting to offer lifts to those without rides can stand and wait to match with those without someone to meet them on the other side.

The refugees planning to move on elsewhere in Poland can make their way to platforms 1, 2 or 3. Tickets are currently being waived for those with Ukrainian identification carrying on to another destination. The ticket station is bustling with even more yellow-vested volunteers, most of whom have black ink scribbled on their back to signal what languages they speak — Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Arabic, English.

Sara, a Spanish-speaking volunteer, explains that they’re hoping to find a spot for everyone who arrived on the most recent train. A high school about 400 metres from the station has opened its doors as a spot for people to rest their heads until finding something more permanent.

On the back side of the station, there’s a heaping pile of donated clothes, bedding and pillows. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” you can hear a nearby volunteer jest as they direct people out to the taxi stand. Around the corner, you can peer through the windows of rooms previously used for administrative purposes that have been converted into a makeshift relief centre, lined with cots and mattresses.

Before leaving the station, Vetu, a 24-year-old Ghanaian studying at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in Ukraine’s capital, stops to ask for directions.

The glassy-eyed computer science student says he left Kyiv on Sunday morning. Or wait, he says, maybe it was the day before.

“I haven’t slept in three days,” Vetu says. He and his friends left their home by foot, as there were no cars or taxis on the road, “just tanks and explosions.”

“I walked a lot of kilometres and then caught a train from Lviv” in western Ukraine, he said. Some 36 hours later, he finds himself in Przemyśl, Poland, a train ride and a world away from a reality he’s still struggling to process.

“It’s really difficult coming across,” Vetu says. “I can’t put it in words actually.”