Polish women band together to give Ukrainian women car rides to safe refuge

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/21/ [login to see] /russia-ukraine-war-refugees-ukrainian-women-poland
When 22-year-old Hanna Antoniuk arrived on the Polish border, one of the first things she noticed was all the men offering rides.

She had fled Ukraine alone. It was night. And the scene made her nervous.

"It's an unknown, unfamiliar country, unknown men. You don't know the language, and you don't know what can happen at all," she says.

Most of the 5 million Ukrainians who have fled the Russian invasion are women and children. Human rights monitors say they are vulnerable to sex and labor traffickers.

Elzbieta "Ella" Jarmulska, a 39-year-old project manager and board-game developer, sensed this too as she was standing in the crowd at the reception center that night early last month. She had driven from her home in Prace Male, a town just outside Warsaw, the capital.

She squeezed inside to see Ukrainian women and children waiting inside. Outside were the men, all holding handwritten signs with the names of cities.

"Twenty, 30 guys, big guys by the way, standing together in a group," she recalls. "I mean, I wouldn't feel comfortable walking up to them and saying, 'Oh, which one of you gentlemen will take me for free around Poland?' "