The Russian invasion of Ukraine means that countries in Central and Eastern Europe are facing an unprecedented number of refugees crossing their borders. Poland, for instance, received around 100,000 refugees in the previous 30 years and then over 2 million in the first three weeks of the conflict with a huge wave of popular support for refugees including hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens opening their homes to Ukrainian refugees. This level of support is evident across Central and Eastern Europe and raises the question of what has changed and why are responses to Ukrainian refugees so different from those to refugees from other war torn countries such as Afghanistan and Syria?

Back in 2015, Central and Eastern European governments strongly opposed the European Commission’s plans to relocate asylum applicants throughout the EU and vowed to keep their borders closed to refugees, which caused a major rift within the EU. These same governments are now welcoming refugees from Ukraine as manifested in a wave of grassroot volunteer humanitarian efforts and governmental support for displaced Ukrainians. This is especially visible in the unanimous vote of EU members to activate the Temporary Protection Directive for the very first time since it was agreed in 2001.

This is a part of a blog post by Lenka Dražanová.