More than 4 million refugees have been forced to flee Ukraine, in 34 days of the full-scale war unleashed by Russia, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency reported Tuesday.
The agency said that the Ukrainian-Polish border accounted for 58.1% of all refugees: 2.337 million.
Romania received 608,936 and Moldova 387,151, Hungary received 364,804, and Slovakia 281,172.
UNHCR did not update the data for refugees fleeing to Russia. However, after the publication of data on Wednesday, a new trend of a sharp increase in the number of refugees from Ukraine to Russia and Belarus was confirmed. Now their number has reached 350,632 and 10,902, respectively.
According to UNHCR, if since March 14 (when the total number of refugees amounted to 3 million people) the number of refugees fleeing to the EU countries and Moldova has increased by 41.7%, then to Russia – almost 2.5 times, and to Belarus – almost 9 times . This increase coincided with Kyiv’s accusations against Moscow of forcibly transporting Ukrainian citizens to Russia and Belarus, as well as preventing them from leaving the war zone in the direction of Ukraine.
According to the UNHCR, the refugee influx from Ukraine is gradually decreasing, in particular, over the past five days it has decreased from 66,080 to 41,670 per day.
Earlier UN predicted the possible number of refugees from Ukraine at 4 million people. UNHCR estimated in the middle of March that there were currently 6.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine, and more than 12 million people have been affected in the most war-affected areas of Ukraine.
“Humanitarian needs are growing exponentially,” UNHCR said on 18 March.
The agency said that by the middle of 2021 there were only 53,470 Ukrainian refugees in the world who applied for the appropriate status, of which 36,490 were in Europe.
As of the middle of 2020, the UNHCR estimated the Ukrainian diaspora in the world at 6.1 million, including 5 million in Europe.
The agency said that the right to move freely within the Schengen area means there are very few border controls within the European Union. The data of arrivals in Schengen countries (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) bordering Ukraine therefore only represents border crossings into that country, but we estimate that a large number of people have moved onwards to other countries.
In addition, UNHCR does not count individuals from bordering countries leaving Ukraine to return home. (With inputs from agencies)
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