We need to prepare now for the humanitarian disaster resulting from Vladimir Putin’s scorched earth war on Ukraine: the probable displacement of 10 million or more sudden refugees. We’re witnessing the fastest crisis displacement of innocent people since World War II, with more than 2 million documented Ukrainian refugees — mostly women, children and the elderly — in just the first two weeks of this crisis. This number obviously doesn’t include those who escaped without being documented or those who had already begun fleeing from Moldova or other neighboring states. The pace continues to escalate in line with Putin’s increasingly indiscriminate shelling and unthinkable war crimes.
We need to act.
After a career in our national security space, I now serve on the national board for one of the largest U.S.-based refugee resettlement agencies, headquartered here in Baltimore, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. What I know is this: These numbers of people in sudden peril far outstrip European ability to handle it in the region, and the Biden administration needs to take urgent action now — now — to prepare for the even larger exodus we can see coming. Poland in particular is performing spectacularly, receiving by far the largest numbers of sudden refugees over the last 10 days. It won’t be able to keep up over the long haul, however — and neither will our standard refugee resettlement procedures.
