This is part 6 in an occasional series about tensions between Moscow and the West at key flashpoints along Russia’s borders and in the territories of the former Soviet Union.

WARSAW, Poland — Vladimir Kovalenko does not take his good fortune for granted. With a steady income and his own rented room in Poland’s capital, Kovalenko, a 32-year-old from eastern Ukraine’s Horlivka never forgets things could have turned out very differently. In the end, a mere 40 minutes decided his fate. In June of last year, tipped off that pro-Russian separatists were searching for him, he spent three hours hiding under the stairway of a local hospital before being discovered and driven to a courthouse where the nascent Moscow-allied regime’s prisoners were kept. Within minutes of arriving, he fled his captors as the sound of warplanes boomed overhead. “Those guys scattered when they heard the engines,” he said. That evening, he ran across fields to escape. He eventually took up work with a charity in Dnipropetrovsk, helping drive supplies to Ukrainian soldiers stationed 150 miles away on the front line. Friends concerned for his mental health pooled resources to buy him a European work visa, he said. So he headed west to try his luck in Poland. Today Kovalenko spends six hours of each day volunteering at Ukrainian World, a drop-in center in Warsaw where Poland’s Ukrainian community finds help. Aside from providing humanitarian aid, free language classes and other services aimed at assimilating newcomers, the center runs a hotline to provide advice on anything from signing employment contracts to securing refugee status. A resident psychologist is on hand for those scarred by memories of war in the country’s east. Amid an unprecedented influx of Ukrainian nationals into Poland, Ukrainian World has emerged as a lifeline for those fleeing violence or economic hardship back home. A report released July 21 by Poland’s Office for Foreigners reveals a 50-fold increase in Ukrainian claims for refugee status from 2013 to 2014. In the same period, applications for temporary residence more than doubled, from 13,000 to 29,000. The pace continues: In the first seven months of 2015, over 32,000 Ukrainians applied to legalize their status in Poland. The majority of those requests have been approved, and Ukrainians now account for one quarter of Poland’s immigrant population. Most arrive on temporary work visas like Kovalenko’s, which more than 300,000 of his compatriots requested last year. According to the Center for European Studies, a Warsaw think tank, Ukrainians in Poland now number 400,000. Higher applicant numbers coincide with a rising proportion of rejections, however. The same report shows that 91 percent of permit requests were granted in 2013. In 2015 that figure was just 67 percent. Changes introduced in May 2014 have streamlined the system, but processing delays are leaving some of Poland’s Ukrainians in a precarious legal position. Kovalenko’s work visa expired March 1, and he said he has heard nothing about his application for temporary residence since submitting it in February. Forced to give up legal employment, he now makes money under the table through odd jobs to cover his rent and living expenses.

The facility provides services to Ukrainians like Vladimir Kovalenko, a volunteer at the center. Matthew Luxmoore

As they watch their compatriots arrive in droves, longer-term members of Poland’s Ukrainian community have felt the impact. Natalia Panchenko has lived and worked in Warsaw since 2010 and is a fluent speaker of Polish, which, like her native Ukrainian, is a Slavic language. Legalizing her status was a simple process in the past, she said, but a seven-month wait for her latest residence permit left her unable to travel abroad and caused problems for her and her employer. With some of her friends waiting 12 months, she suspects the delays may not be due purely to rising demand. “Officially [the Office for Foreigners] says it has shortages in staff, but I don’t believe it. It’s nearly impossible to reach it by phone, and when you do, the workers have no answers. I’m beginning to think there might be some quotas for these permits,” she said. Ewa Piechota of the Office for Foreigners insisted that despite what she calls an “astronomic” increase in applications, the spike in demand did not catch the government by surprise. “Watching events in Ukraine and seeing the situation change in 2014, we already drafted emergency plans for a wave of people seeking refugee status in the country,” she said. Nevertheless, she admitted that the government’s resources have been stretched to the limit since the crisis in Ukraine began, with staffers struggling to cope with the increased workload. Organizations like Ukrainian World have stepped in to help shoulder that burden. On a recent Thursday afternoon, the center, on Warsaw’s Nowy Swiat Street, were busy, as usual. While several volunteers saw to visitors at the reception area, a small group huddled around three computers at the room’s other end, browsing job and accommodation offers. Above them on the first floor, 20 Ukrainians waited in a brightly lit hall for a Polish lesson to begin. Anya Konyukhova was attending her first class, having finally managed to negotiate time off work. A shy but animated 31-year-old from Zaporizhia, she left Ukraine with her best friend one month ago, frustrated with low pay and the rising cost of living. A six-month work visa cost her 500 hryvnia ($23), she said, and the line to get one meant she had to delay her departure several times. Both women found work as cleaners in a Warsaw hotel, where, they said, all their colleagues are Ukrainian. “What can we do? We don’t know the language,” Konyukhova said. Although she insisted she earns more now than she did as a pharmacist in Ukraine, she hopes knowledge of Polish will lead to a better-paying job.

“Achtung Russia,” part of an exhibit at Ukrainian World’s Museum of Maidan, depicts the “little green man,” exalted in Russia as a hero of the Crimean operation in March 2014, as an aggressive occupier. Matthew Luxmoore