46 Europe The Economist March 12th 2022
A continentcoping
S
he thoughtit might have been fireworks. But as Olga Nietsche
looked out the window of her flat inKyiv on the morning of Feb
ruary 24th, a rocket flew by and exploded not ten minutes’ walk
away. The 28yearold checked her phone, brimming with messag
es not about her work as a translator but about the onset of war.
Then days went by when nothing made sense.Friends in Russia—
former friends, now—insisted to her that she was lying about
there being a war at all. It wasn’t long before she had to go. A mate
with a car helped her get to Przemysl in Poland, normally a trip of
several hours, now a dayslong ordeal. It will take more trains to
reach Berlin, where her mother lives. She carries only a few docu
ments, a sleepingbag and a change of clothes; her voice falters as
she wonders what the male relatives she has left behind will face.
For her part, all she wants is to sleep. It is a small luxury, but one
she has not been afforded in what seems an eternity. Then, she
says, she will volunteer to help other Ukrainians, using her lan
guage skills to help them get beyond the range of bombs, to reach
the safety of European countries that are still at peace.
Ms Nietsche is part of what is likely to become the biggest surge
of refugees in Europe since the second world war. Over 2m people
have fled Ukraine since Russian troops marched in on February
24th. That figure will swell. Estimates, should the bloody cam
paign continue, vary from 5m to perhaps double that. Previous ref
ugee flows, notably when over a million Syrians and others
crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in 2015, ignited political
squabbles that showed the eu at its worst. This time the bloc is dis
playing its best: a mix of generosity and pragmatism few might
have guessed it was capable of.
More goodwill will be needed in coming weeks. In any conflict
the first to flee are those who can: urban types like Ms Nietsche
with passports, cars and credit cards. Those with friends or family
in the thriving Ukrainian diaspora are especially likely to brave the
journey, since they know they will have a couch to kip on when
they arrive. Despite the huge numbers on the move, migration
wonks are startled that facilities to process fleeing Ukrainians are
merely filling up rather than overwhelmed. Ukrainians are book
ing Airbnbs en route to their relatives. Locals are helping in touch
ing, imaginative ways. At Przemysl station, mothers found donatedpramsto replace those left behind. In Poland and beyond peo
ple are offering spare rooms or homecooked meals.
Why such generosity now, when Europe has spent years dis
cussing how to build fences to keep migrants out? Racism is surely
a factor. Many Europeans feel more comfortable welcoming large
numbers of Ukrainians than they do Syrians or Afghans. Another
may be that today’s refugees are largely women and children. (Uk
rainian males of fighting age had to stay behind and fight.) Previ
ous waves were largely of single men, whom the locals found
more threatening. Finally, proximity matters. To those on the eu’s
eastern fringes, these refugees are neighbours. Europeans sympa
thise with them partly because the warmonger they are fleeing
menaces the rest of Europe, too.
Poland, where most Ukrainian refugees have found their way,
was already home to more than a million Ukrainians. Some had
fled Russia’s original foray into their country in 2014, though they
werealso attracted by plentiful jobs with higher pay. The two
countries speak similar languages and share a tangled history.
Even before the crisis, Ukrainians enjoyed visafree travel to the
eu. Unlike Afghans or Eritreans, they did not come on overloaded
dinghies, via refugee camps. So the eu’s decision to let them all
stay for at least a year, no questions asked, was a relatively easy
one. Ukrainian children can go to school; their parents can work.
Europe’s social safetynets will catch them if they cannot.
But strains will appear. The countries that have taken in the
most Ukrainians so far, notably Poland and Hungary, have in the
past opposed shuffling migrants from one eucountry to the
next—because they did not want to take in Africans or Muslims.
Not all the Ukrainians who first turned up in countries bordering
Ukraine will stay there. Where they might go is anyone’s guess;
only Britain, now outside the eu, is putting up barriers. Politicians
in host countries say Ukrainians will be eager to return home once
peace is restored. But will they? The euscheme to grant Ukrai
nians “temporary protection” status, unanimously approved on
March 4th, was devised in the wake of the bloody breakup of
Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when millions fled a series of wars. Har
bouring them was initially intended as a shortterm arrangement.
But for many it became permanent: migrants integrated in their
adopted countries, and stayed long after the wars ended.A work of years
A population’s consent to welcome migrants is a fragile thing. Will
the goodwill endure if Ukrainian refugees are joined by large
numbers of Russians escaping from Vladimir Putin’s brutal re
gime? Would it survive a recession induced by skyhigh energy
prices, which the war has already caused? What if it were supple
mented by a resurgence in arrivals from farther afield—if, for ex
ample, soaring food prices in the Middle East were to drive more
migrants to chance the journey across the Mediterranean?
In 2015 Angela Merkel told Germany, “Wir schaffen das.” (We
can handle this.) Her successors across Europe should steel their
electorates in the same way today. Already Ukrainians are starting
to arrive who will need more help than Ms Nietsche. Since Ukrai
nian refugees are allowed to work, they will pay taxes. But their
children will need schools, and this will require both money and
planning. The net cost of giving refuge to Ukrainians is unknown,
and will surely be dwarfed by the economic shocks of the war it
self. But the time to start preparingis now, while sympathy is still
fresh. These past weeks, a unitedEurope has shown its best face;
but the work has barely begun.nCharlemagne
Europe is helping refugees from Ukraine, but the road ahead will be long