More than 3.9 million Ukrainians flee war
GENEVA, Switzerland — More than 3.9 million Ukrainians have now fled Russia's invasion of their country, the United Nations announced Tuesday, with the Red Cross saying refugees were arriving exhausted and feeling "hopeless".
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said 3,901,713 Ukrainians had fled the country — a figure up 38,916 from Monday's update.
The daily flow of refugees has slowed to around 40,000 in recent days.
But the exodus "is unprecedented since World War II in Europe, certainly in terms of the speed and scale of the displacement," UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh told reporters in Geneva.
Francesco Rocca, the president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), added: "We are seeing millions of people arriving at borders, their coping capacities stretched by what they have experienced and witnessed.
"People are understandably tired and stressed, physically, mentally and emotionally," he said.
The UN's International Organization for Migration said that in addition to Ukrainian refugees, close to 200,000 non-Ukrainians living, studying and working in the country have fled.
And as of March 16, some 6.48 million people were estimated to be internally displaced within Ukraine, according to an IOM representative survey.
Before Russia's February 24 invasion, Ukraine had a population of 37 million in the regions under government control, excluding Russia-annexed Crimea and the pro-Russian separatist regions in the east.
Here is a breakdown of how many Ukrainian refugees have fled to neighbouring countries, according to UNHCR:
Poland
Six out of 10 Ukrainian refugees — 2,314,623 so far — have crossed into Poland, according to UNHCR.
Many people who cross into Ukraine's immediate western neighbours travel onto other states in Europe's Schengen open-borders zone.
Romania
The number of Ukrainians who have entered EU member state Romania has now topped 600,000.
These 602,461 Ukrainians include a large number who crossed over from Moldova, wedged between Romania and Ukraine.
The vast majority are thought to have gone on to other countries.
IFRC president Rocca visited Romania last week.
"Romanian Red Cross teams have been working 24/7 at border crossings since day one, showing great empathy and humanity, providing basic items as well as SIM cards and mobile charging stations to help people," he said Tuesday.
"Many who have crossed the border simply ask for a cup of coffee or tea. Seemingly simple aid like this can offer families peace of mind in an otherwise hopeless moment."
Moldova
The Moldovan border is the nearest to the major port city of Odessa.
UNHCR said 385,222 Ukrainians had crossed into the non-EU state, one of the poorest in Europe.
To reduce congestion, organised convoys leave daily from the Palanca crossing for Romania, with the most vulnerable prioritised for transfer.
Hungary
Some 359,197 Ukrainians have entered Hungary, according to UNHCR.
Slovakia
Some 278,238 people have crossed Ukraine's shortest border into Slovakia.
Russia
Some 271,254 refugees have sought shelter in Russia, according to UNHCR figures last updated on March 22.
In addition, 113,000 people crossed into Russia from the separatist-held pro-Russian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine between February 21 and 23.
UNHCR spokesman Saltmarsh said Tuesday the agency was aware of recent allegations of forced movements of people from Ukraine to Russia but could not corroborate such information.
Belarus
Some 9,875 refugees have made it north to Russia's close ally Belarus.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
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