Another 52,000 Ukrainians flee war as refugees
GENEVA, Switzerland — More than 5.3 million Ukrainians have fled their country since Russia invaded two months ago, the United Nations said Wednesday, with more than 52,000 joining their ranks in the past 24 hours.
In total, 5,317,219 people have fled Ukraine as refugees since February 24, according to the latest data from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
That marks an increase of 52,452 over the figure given on Tuesday.
While the outflow has slowed significantly since March, UNHCR has projected that three million more Ukrainians could become refugees by the end of the year.
The exodus has been described as Europe's fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II, but a leading humanitarian warned Wednesday that even that was an understatement.
Including the 7.7 million people estimated to be displaced within Ukraine, more than 12 million people were displaced in the first eight weeks of the war, he pointed out.
"People talk about since the Second World War, (but) tell me when in the Second World War there were 12 million people displaced in eight weeks," Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), told reporters.
The large displacements back then happened "over a longer period," he said.
In addition to the Ukrainian refugees, the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) said an additional 224,975 citizens of third countries — largely students and migrant workers — have also escaped to neighbouring countries since the invasion began.
Women and children account for 90 percent of the Ukrainians who have fled abroad, with men aged 18 to 60 eligible for military call-up unable to leave.
Almost two-thirds of Ukrainian children have fled their homes.
Before the invasion, Ukraine had a population of 37 million in the regions under government control, excluding Russia-annexed Crimea and the pro-Russian separatist-controlled regions in the east.
Here is a breakdown of how many Ukrainian refugees have fled to neighbouring countries, according to UNHCR:
Poland
Nearly six out of 10 Ukrainian refugees — 2,944,164 so far — have crossed into Poland, according to UNHCR numbers up to April 26.
Many of them have travelled on to other states in Europe's Schengen open-borders zone.
Meanwhile, more than 800,000 people have crossed from Poland into Ukraine, Polish border guards said.
Before the war, Poland was home to around 1.5 million Ukrainians, chiefly migrant workers.
Romania
A total of 793,420 Ukrainians have entered the EU member state as of April 26, including 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.
Russia
Another 627,512 refugees have sought shelter in Russia, according to data last updated on April 26.
In addition, 105,000 people crossed into Russia from the separatist-held pro-Russian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine between February 18 and 23.
Hungary
A total of 502,142 Ukrainians had entered Hungary as of April 26.
Moldova
The Moldovan border is the closest to the major port city of Odessa. A total of 437,362 Ukrainians have crossed into the non-EU state, one of the poorest in Europe, with a population of 2.6 million. Most have moved on.
Slovakia
A total of 360,458 people had crossed Ukraine's shortest border into Slovakia as of April 26.
Belarus
Another 24,719 refugees made it north to Russia's close ally Belarus as of April 26.
Returns
At the same time, many Ukrainians have also travelled back into Ukraine. UNHCR said that between February 28 and April 26, Ukrainian border guards had registered 1,209,500 Ukrainians returning to the country.
UNHCR stressed though that "this figure reflects cross-border movements, which can be pendular, and does not necessarily indicate sustainable returns as the situation across Ukraine remains highly volatile and unpredictable."
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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