PRZEMYSL, Poland — Two years into Russia’s war on Ukraine, nearly all of the independent foreign volunteers who once flooded this border city to assist Ukrainian refugees have gone.
Jay Rivera, a 38-year-old former account manager from Pennsylvania, is the only American remaining.
Rivera — like most foreign volunteers — arrived in Przemysl in the weeks after Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.
At that time, there were thousands of volunteers serving food, building shelters and offering aid to those displaced by the war and streaming into the European Union.
Americans met up via word of mouth at central train stations and English was commonly heard on the streets.
Now, there’s only Rivera.
He initially stayed for a few weeks at the start of the war, came back to the US, got his documents and dog in order, quit his job, realized — in his words — that his “life was absolutely meaningless” and returned to Poland to create a new life among the shelters.
“I had realized that nothing I had done in the past ten years merited nearly as much as I had done in the past two weeks,” he recalled to The Post last week.
Today, Rivera is running the Hope Shelter, which he says is “the largest refugee center on Poland’s borders and the only shelter that accepts people with all disabilities and accepts pets.”
The shelter is currently occupied by large families of Roma Ukrainians, who hope to continue on to Germany, where government aid is more generous.
Przemysl, with a population of around 60,000, is a quick bus ride away from the Medyka border crossing, through which tens of thousands of Ukrainians passed at the beginning of the war.
Officials used to offer refugee housing at the local Tesco supermarket location, but later downsized its capacity before shutting down the service completely.
Rivera’s Hope Shelter is one of just two left in the city, along with the aptly named Ukrainian House.
The number of refugees is “not even close” to two years ago, with Rivera estimating “5%” of the 2022 flow currently traverse the crossing on foot.
“However, the big problem is, there’s no more aid, there’s no more support,” he added.
Hope Shelter is funded by a couple of NGOs, but independent donations are hard to come by.
“When the refugee crisis first started, there were so many people, so much aid, so many volunteers,” Rivera said. “You could put something up on Facebook saying, ‘I need $100 to send someone to wherever.’ No problem, [funds raised] within five minutes.
“However, now, I’ve been fundraising to send this family to Germany for a week, I haven’t received a single donation,” Rivera went on.
“Aid has dried up or is being secured by the large organizations and then smaller organizations need to apply for grants and need to jump through numerous hoops.”
“The largest refugee center on Poland’s borders is basically run by independent volunteers,” he added. “Not by a big organization. We get donations from random people … big word of mouth and we do apply for grants.”
Hope Shelter has a capacity of 100 people, though most days it is occupied by around 40 refugees.
“We typically tell people they can stay with us for five days,” according to Rivera, “but if they’re working with us on transportation, they can stay as long as they need until transportation is arranged.”
Whatever the future holds for Ukraine and its refugees, Rivera says he’s certain of one thing: He has no plans to return to the US.
