Housing was an afterthought when Oksana Bezkorovaina arrived in Poland from bordering Ukraine with her daughter Masha and sister, Maryna. The trio had been through the wringer trying to make it out of their home in Kharkiv, where they would sleep in the basement with their shoes on — ready to flee at any moment.
“I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and started calling colleagues,” Alexander (Sasha) Galkin recalled of the first night of the war. As the director of Right to Protection (R2P) — HIAS’ long time partner in Ukraine — he had urgent priorities: ensuring the safety of R2P staff, and working out how the organization could pivot to the new emergency.
Right to Protection (R2P), a Ukrainian refugee assistance organization established with help from HIAS in 2013, is working to help displaced people in the midst of the ongoing war.