More than one million refugees have fled Ukraine in the week since the conflict with Russia began, the majority heading west to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova.

At this rate, more asylum seekers will have entered the European Union in a matter of days than in the entire year of 2015, when 1.3 million individuals crossed from the Middle East and Africa. The influx from Ukraine would be the continent’s largest refugee catastrophe since World War II.

The majority of the refugees are fleeing to Poland, where helicopters buzz over the military border between Ukraine and the NATO alliance led by the United States.

Many European nations have been shaken by the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees, who did not perceive a Russian invasion as imminent as the US did and had not anticipated such a large-scale exodus.

Two days into the battle, which began last Thursday, no EU member state had requested tents, blankets, or other basic essentials from the bloc’s emergency stocks.

On the eve of the conflict, Poland’s local administrations were still searching suitable locations—town halls, stadiums, and schools—for an influx that they anticipated would number no more than one million people.

It’s been a week, and Poland is more than halfway there.

Massive Ukrainian displacement required a volunteer army on both sides of the border. As the shelves at gas stations in Ukraine ran out of food, elderly residents set up stands with food from their own kitchens to give away. Several people walked through the traffic, handing out soup and oatmeal to people who were stuck in their cars and to families walking next to them on the trail.

“I saw hundreds of them, mothers with children passing by the cars, day and night,” said a 29-year-old IT worker who sat in her car for four days before crossing into Poland. “They literally drag their feet and these children. They don’t have energy and strength. They throw their luggage into ditches, because they are not able to carry it with them.”

Many of the refugees arrived at the border in trains crammed with women and children, with the lights turned off and the curtains drawn, and cell service cut off. The voyage, which should have taken two hours, took eighteen hours because the train halted for hours at a time and went slowly down other tracks.

On the Polish side, in Przemyl, a swarm of volunteers transformed a parking area across from a shopping mall into a miniature tent city, ushering confused refugees into buses. A line of people stood nearby, holding cardboard signs with the names of nations to which they were willing to grant free rides: the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, or France. Kitchen teams made chocolate crepes for the kids and provided amenities and medical help.

“Nobody told us to come here. Nobody, including us, knew what to do. We had to figure it out ourselves,” said an aid worker who was scrambling to find medicine for a group of sick children.

Authorities were able to process the historic flood of refugees thanks to the mobilization of volunteers, according to a government spokesman.

“We act together as a state and as a society,” he said. “So the synergy effect of the state and the society is helping incredibly with the guests from Ukraine.”

Whatever the course and end of the conflict, it is very certain that it will result in a massive diaspora of Ukrainians in the EU, changing politics, society, and the refugee population on the continent.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, four million Ukrainians are expected to flee the nation, a figure that could climb depending on the severity of the conflict. On Thursday, EU member states’ ministers backed a proposal for two-year residency and work permits for Ukrainians who enter the union, as well as housing, medical care, schools, and social-welfare help. The idea is anticipated to be legally adopted.

The large influx of migrants will almost certainly have long-term consequences for Europe, particularly Poland, where the population has been stable at 38 million since 1987. Since World War II, when Nazi occupiers killed Poland’s large Jewish community and other minorities either fled or ended up on the Soviet side of redrawn borders, the country has had very few ethnic minorities.

Following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, an estimated one to two million Ukrainians relocated to Poland, spawning a massive new diaspora that has become a fixture in a country accustomed to emigration.

Poland’s government has attempted to limit the flow of asylum seekers attempting to enter Belarus this winter, primarily from the Middle East and Africa, and it has blocked an EU plan to relocate refugees who reached Germany in 2015, primarily from Syria. It has, however, welcomed these Ukrainians, who speak a similar language and have found work in a variety of industries, including local stores, restaurants, and real estate.

This diaspora will most likely spread to Western Europe.

Since the start of hostilities last week, over 5,000 refugees have been documented in Germany, with over 1,300 coming by train in Berlin alone on Tuesday. Many of them were on their way to see relatives in other countries, such as Italy.

Ukrainians crossing the border at Krocienko, a small border post in the Polish foothills, are picked up by friends and family arriving in cars from as far as Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Latvia, and Lithuania.

People and cars lined up at Ukraine’s border with Poland just a few hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin made the announcement in an early morning speech last Thursday.

The border crossing point became clogged quickly, with refugees having to wait eight hours to cross on foot.

“It’s pure chaos here. All our buses are full,” said the driver of a bus last week. “This is just the beginning.”

“They simply didn’t believe us that the scale of this crisis is so overwhelming,” said a local official.

Finally, the fire department dispatched buses to gather people crossing into Poland, and cooperation increased.

On the Polish side of each of the major border crossings, cars were parked for more than a mile as relatives waited for their loved ones to cross. EMTs dashed past a mob of people waiting in the cold and rain without shelter on the Ukrainian side. Volunteers delivering food confronted crowds of people who instantly emptied their boxes.

The line to get into Poland had stretched to two days by Saturday, with some people travelling 25 kilometres to the border. On the Ukrainian side of the border, cases of diarrhea and other illnesses began to spread, and shoving bouts broke out as refugees jostled for space at the gates.

Border guards in Ukraine began detaining African and Middle Eastern refugees for days, prioritizing Ukrainians, most of whom were mothers with children.

As they entered Poland via the green metal gate, firefighters grabbed their baggage and rolled them onto waiting buses, while others assisted with child transport.

“We have too few volunteers, so many refugees,” said one volunteer helping refugees stumbling into a parking lot to direct their next move.

Image Credit: Getty

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