Ukrainian Refugee Crisis

wfpstory:576422092:wfpstory

Read this article for free:

or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Subscribe and receive a limited-edition Free Press branded hat or tote.

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $205*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/04/2022 (1560 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Poland welcomes Ukrainian refugees, but its handling of humanitarian crises is rarely flawless

People with suitcases and bags on the walkway to the border crossing at Medyka on April 6. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press files)

Posted:

KRAKOW, Poland — When I first arrived in Poland a little more than three weeks ago, I began taking pictures of anything I saw on the streets that pledged solidarity for Ukraine. I gave up on this project, mostly, after my collection swelled to over 100 images taken in just one city and only a couple of days. A rain of pictures became a river, then a flood, then an ocean.

Read full story

 


 

From Odesa, by way of Pinawa, with love

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Alexander Leontiev poses for a portrait with his car, which he has decorated with Canadian flags, in Wrzesnia on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. For Melissa story. Winnipeg Free Press 2022.

Posted:

WRZEŚNIA, Poland — The horses watch with cursory interest as three-year-old Timur Mykholevskiy tries to scramble over the lower planks of a fence that leads away from the pen. It’s a valiant effort, but the boy’s legs are too short to quite carry him over, so he wriggles and grunts and finally stretches his hand towards two visiting reporters.

Read full story

 


 

Winnipeg-born Michael Rubenfeld helping to keep Ukraine’s broken hearts beating through art

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Michael Rubenfeld shows one of his newest art projects, which highlights the anti-Semitic nature of traditional “lucky Jew” paintings, at the FestivALT office in Krakow.

Posted:

KRAKOW — On Feb. 15, nine days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Oksana Pyzh and her husband packed up their kid, their car and a few of their things, and began the long drive west from their home in Kharkiv, towards Poland, stopping every few hours along the way. A leisurely pace, compared to the flight of those who came after, but there were no bombs then.

Read full story

 


 

Refugee Ukrainians far from defeated

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The train station in Przemysl on Thursday, April 7, 2022. For Melissa story. Winnipeg Free Press 2022.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
The movement of people is non-stop at the train station in Przemysl.

Posted:

RZESZÓW, Poland — From the outside, the guest house on the edge of Rzeszów looks quiet, tucked on a narrow road that meanders past quaint homes nestled beside sprawling green gardens. A few cars are parked in front, some with Ukrainian licence plates, but the atmosphere here is idyllic and suburban, bordering on rustic.

Read full story

 


 

On one side, a war-torn nation; on the other, a community of volunteers ready to help refugees

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Aid tents line the walkway to the Medyka border crossing.

Posted:

MEDYKA, Poland — The shopping cart rattles as Art Ballard pushes it through a squashed parking lot, past a warren of small shops advertising meat and candy. Past the spot where buses pause every few minutes to pick up or drop off dozens of riders, who arrive dragging suitcases stuffed with everything they’d taken with them, when they first fled Ukraine.

Read full story

 


 

Translating and speaking at rallies in Poland: expat Ukrainian a man on a mission

Ukrainian-Canadian Adrian Harasym has offered his translation skills to journalists from around the world. It’s an often difficult experience sharing the refugees’ pain. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)

Posted:

KRAKOW — In any of the 14 languages that Adrian Harasym can speak, the stories he has heard through this war will haunt him. There was the woman from Bucha, who’d hid in her potato cellar until hunger drove her to flee over streets dotted with corpses. There was the woman at a Krakow train station, who’d escaped Kharkiv with the equivalent of just $20.

Read full story

 


 

Manitoba-bound mothers fleeing Ukraine with children are terrified, exhausted - but put on a brave face

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Ilona Protynyak, and her children, Demian (five) and Milena (four), walking through the old town in Warsaw. They have been going for long walks to keep the kids occupied while waiting for the Canadian visa paperwork to come through.

Posted:

WARSAW — On the long bus ride out of Ukraine, Nataliia Cherevko’s son, 11-year-old Bohdan, stopped eating. His stomach hurt. Behind them on the bus was another mother, with two sons, and one of them couldn’t eat, either. It was the stress, their mothers thought. It was being a child, and leaving everything they knew behind them.

Read full story

 


 

Ukrainian refugee on her way to new life in Winnipeg

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Ukrainian refugee Tetiana Maksymtsiv first learned about Winnipeg through a friend who had moved to the city about six years ago. In a few days, she will be flying to Winnipeg to settle in Canada.

Posted:

WARSAW — It’s a bitterly cold morning in Poland’s capital, at the heart of the city’s diplomatic row. Outside the concrete-and-glass edifice of the Canadian embassy, about four dozen people are waiting, mostly women with children in tow.

Read full story

Report Error Submit a Tip

More Stories

Poilievre can only smile and nod after Carney’s chess move

Tom Brodbeck 5 minute read Preview

Poilievre can only smile and nod after Carney’s chess move

Tom Brodbeck 5 minute read 1:51 PM CDT

Mark Carney may still be relatively new to elected politics, but he’s proving to be a remarkably quick study in the art of political chess.

His decision to appoint Conservative MP Richard Martel last week to the Senate wasn’t just about filling a vacancy. It was a calculated move that accomplished several political objectives at once while leaving Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre with virtually no way to respond.

That’s what good political strategy looks like.

On the surface, appointing a sitting Conservative MP to the Senate appears generous, even bipartisan. It allows Carney to portray himself as someone willing to look beyond party labels in selecting qualified people for public service.

Read
1:51 PM CDT

Man armed with ‘edged weapon’ dies after dispute in Linden Woods home

Scott Billeck 6 minute read Preview

Man armed with ‘edged weapon’ dies after dispute in Linden Woods home

Scott Billeck 6 minute read Updated: 4:21 PM CDT

The family of a 42-year-old Winnipeg man shot and killed by police in Linden Woods on Monday night says the incident raises troubling questions about how officers respond to people in mental-health crisis.

“Their reaction to mental health is my concern,” said the man’s sister-in-law, Erica Smith, who spoke outside her brother-in-law’s Avon Gate home on Tuesday. She said her brother-in-law struggled with his mental health.

“It didn’t have to end like this,” she said, fighting back tears. “It could have ended differently.”

Police said officers encountered the man armed with an “edged weapon” at the home when they arrived shortly before 10:30 p.m.

Read
Updated: 4:21 PM CDT

Winnipeg life goes on in the polar vortex

Kevin Rollason 6 minute read Preview

Winnipeg life goes on in the polar vortex

Kevin Rollason 6 minute read Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019

Schools closed in Chicago, postal deliveries cancelled from Minnesota to Michigan, flights delayed or cancelled due to extreme cold delivered by the recent polar vortex.

In North Dakota, Grand Forks and Fargo closed universities, schools, and numerous other services. (According to a list from a North Dakota media outlet, even Duane's Gun Repair was closed for the day in Fargo.)

Yet, north across the border in Winnipeg, schools are open, its universities and colleges filled with students going to classes, and airline passengers departing to other frigid areas of the country or to warm-weather locations.

How do Canadians keep a city running when the temperature is expected to top out at -31 C, almost 20 C lower than normal?

Read
Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019

Cruise control: city mulls move to curb street noise levels

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Preview

Cruise control: city mulls move to curb street noise levels

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Friday, Jan. 17, 2020

Sunday cruise nights on Portage Avenue are a Winnipeg tradition, but cavalcades of convertibles and muscle cars rolling down the street can come with a noisy byproduct.

Next week, the city's executive policy committee will discuss some changes — including noise cameras that capture licence plate data of particularly loud vehicles — aimed at keeping the volume down.

The recommendation, which would require provincial approval, comes on the heels of complaints from area residents about the Sunday night noise levels, says Coun. Cindy Gilroy (Daniel McIntyre).

"Most residents don't mind the cruise nights themselves," she said Thursday. "It's the revving and the screeching" and the modified mufflers.

Read
Friday, Jan. 17, 2020

Kennedy 'disturbed' by Hockey Canada revelations

Joshua Clipperton, The Canadian Press 7 minute read Preview

Kennedy 'disturbed' by Hockey Canada revelations

Joshua Clipperton, The Canadian Press 7 minute read Tuesday, Jun. 21, 2022

Sheldon Kennedy tuned in as Hockey Canada executives faced question after pointed question.

Tom Renney and Scott Smith were getting grilled by parliamentarians in Ottawa about the organization's handling of an alleged sexual assault involving eight players and a subsequent out-of-court settlement.

A voice for victims following his own experience being abused by then-coach Graham James in junior hockey, Kennedy had a similar reaction when the sexual assault story involving former Chicago Blackhawks prospect Kyle Beach broke last fall as he watched the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage meeting unfold.

"An archaic response to a human issue," Kennedy said Tuesday in a phone interview with The Canadian Press. "There is an expectation that there's transparency when something like this happens.

Read
Tuesday, Jun. 21, 2022

Sheriff’s officer dies in collision with train

Erik Pindera 2 minute read Preview

Sheriff’s officer dies in collision with train

Erik Pindera 2 minute read 4:41 PM CDT

Manitoba’s premier says the “service and sacrifice” of a sheriff’s officer who died in a train collision near Portage la Prairie on Tuesday morning will “never be forgotten.”

RCMP were called to the collision between a van and the train on Road 40 West, west of Portage, on Tuesday at 8 a.m.

RCMP say it appears a Manitoba Sheriff Services van collided with the train, causing it to roll and land in the ditch.

The driver, a 28-year-old man from Portage, died at the scene, while a passenger received minor injuries and taken by paramedics to hospital as a precaution.

Read
4:41 PM CDT