Nastya Podorozhnya was 24 and living in Krakow when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. She crossed back into Ukraine to help her sister and three nieces escape, then returned to Poland and built Martynka — a small organization providing shelter, a hotline, legal aid, and psychological support to Ukrainian women and children fleeing trafficking and domestic abuse. Since March 2022, Martynka has fielded over 5,000 requests for help and currently handles about 100 calls a month. Around 100 women and children have sheltered in its two-bedroom Krakow apartment. The infrastructure keeping organizations like Martynka alive is now visibly cracking. USAID cuts have intensified competition for grants. UNHCR has slashed its Poland staff from 120 at peak to 40 and closed three of four regional offices — only Warsaw remains. Martynka has already cut one-to-one therapy sessions. Podorozhnya describes summer 2026 as an ongoing, grinding fundraising campaign met with indifference: "Ukraine is not in the headlines anymore." The funding squeeze lands in a political environment that has turned sharply hostile. Poland introduced new rules this year restricting child benefits and free healthcare for refugees who don't work. Hate crimes against Ukrainians rose by a third in the first half of 2025, according to Polish police statistics. Ukrainians constitute more than three-quarters of all foreigners living in Poland, making them the most visible target for resentment. Historical grievances have given that resentment a political vocabulary. In May, President Zelenskyy named a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which participated in the killing of tens of thousands of Poles during World War II. Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded by stripping Zelenskyy of Poland's highest state honor, the Order of the White Eagle. The dispute maps onto an unresolved divergence: Poles remember UPA massacres; many Ukrainians view the UPA and Stepan Bandera as anti-Soviet resistance heroes. Podorozhnya reports that hostility has gone personal. A Ukrainian family's car was destroyed and spray-painted with "Bandera people go back where you came from." Her own online fundraising videos attract hundreds of comments wishing her death. She attributes part of the toxicity to Russian bot operations designed to fracture Polish-Ukrainian solidarity — a claim consistent with documented Russian information campaigns across Central Europe. The structural picture is bleak: the organizations serving the most vulnerable refugees — trafficking survivors, domestic abuse victims — depend on international donor flows that are contracting precisely as demand remains high and the host society's tolerance erodes. The women Martynka shelters include victims of boyfriends who drugged and trafficked them. These are not people who can navigate a benefit-restriction regime or absorb a hate-crime spike. The gap between need and capacity is widening on every axis simultaneously. Despite this, Podorozhnya insists on optimism. "I love my job so much. I want to do this beautiful thing," she says. The question is not her commitment — it is whether the funding, political, and social environment will permit that commitment to produce results at the scale the crisis demands.
