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 (1631 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

Flyers, Monarchs look to bounce back after dropping opening-season bids

Cassidy Dankochik 5 minute read Preview

Flyers, Monarchs look to bounce back after dropping opening-season bids

Cassidy Dankochik 5 minute read 1:27 PM CDT

The Flyers are hoping to improve after an unusual down season by their standards in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League.

Winkler finished fourth in the East Division and were swept in the first round of the playoffs by Niverville.

Head coach and general manager Matt Melo is in his third season with the Flyers and anticipates his team growing throughout the year.

“We’re a young group, I think we’re a strong group, but certainly there’s lots to clean up,” Melo said following a pair of defeats to Steinbach this past weekend to open their season.

Read
1:27 PM CDT

Puzzles Palace

1 minute read Monday, Jul. 27, 2026

To solve our puzzles, please subscribe with this special offer: |

Manitoba students able to opt out of classes with sensitive lessons on sex, drug use

Maggie Macintosh 6 minute read Preview

Manitoba students able to opt out of classes with sensitive lessons on sex, drug use

Maggie Macintosh 6 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2026

Manitoba’s premier pledges to continue allowing parents to pull their kids from health class if content — be it related to human sexuality, substance use or otherwise — clashes with personal beliefs.

Wab Kinew said Tuesday the government’s overhaul of phys-ed and health curriculum in Manitoba schools won’t impact the ability for parents to opt-out of a lesson and deliver material as they see fit.

“As a parent, you are your child’s first and most important teacher and that will always be the case,” Kinew said, surrounded by hundreds of teenagers on the football field outside Kelvin High School during an announcement Tuesday.

More than 100 schools are taking part in a voluntary pilot project this fall. It’s the first systematic review of this curriculum in decades. The changes to kindergarten-to-Grade 12 courses will be mandated to all schools in September 2028.

Read
Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2026

Relief, reproach from law school staff after disgraced ex-dean’s arrest in France

Maggie Macintosh 5 minute read Preview

Relief, reproach from law school staff after disgraced ex-dean’s arrest in France

Maggie Macintosh 5 minute read Yesterday at 5:43 PM CDT

The overseas arrest of a disgraced former law dean who defrauded the University of Manitoba out of more than $600,000 is being met both with relief and renewed frustration in the local legal community.

Read
Yesterday at 5:43 PM CDT

The truth, the hyperbolic truth and nothing but the public accounts truth

Dan Lett 5 minute read Preview

The truth, the hyperbolic truth and nothing but the public accounts truth

Dan Lett 5 minute read Yesterday at 1:49 PM CDT

The Manitoba public accounts — the final and definitive tabulation of government expenditures and revenues — have always been a difficult story to cover.

Difficult because the public accounts are complex, and explaining what the numbers mean and how they differ (but yet illuminate) the provincial budget is a gargantuan task.

However, the thing that really complicates the job of reporting the public accounts is the hyperbolic claims the government of the day makes about the numbers and what they mean.

In pursuit of the truth, let’s look at the numbers from the 2025-26 public accounts released this week, and some of the claims made by Premier Wab Kinew and Finance Minister Adrien Sala.

Read
Yesterday at 1:49 PM CDT

Manitoba’s small oil, gas sector lists 31 ownerless sites — far cry from thousands in Alberta, Saskatchewan

Eva Wasney 7 minute read Preview

Manitoba’s small oil, gas sector lists 31 ownerless sites — far cry from thousands in Alberta, Saskatchewan

Eva Wasney 7 minute read 7:00 AM CDT

As other western provinces struggle to address the environmental and economic fallout from an accumulation of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells, only a tiny portion of Manitoba’s petroleum infrastructure is sitting idle and unclaimed.

But it’s unclear if the province’s small roster of orphan wells is the byproduct of effective regulation — or an historic lack of departmental oversight.

Manitoba’s oil and gas industry is relatively small and generally opaque. None of the experts contacted for this story had direct knowledge of the province’s orphan well landscape.

“My lab has probably measured the most non-producing wells in the country. I don’t think anybody I know is working on it (in Manitoba) who are in the academic realm,” says Mary Kang, an associate professor in civil engineering at McGill University in Montreal.

Read
7:00 AM CDT