According to Pascal Brice, 70,000 refugees are currently in France out of five million people who fled the war.
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“Of the more than 5 million people who had to flee the atrocities committed by the Russian army in Ukraine, around 70,000 are in France“, said Pascal Brice, president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS), this Saturday on franceinfo. According to this former director of OFPRA (the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons), “we do not have a considerable number of refugees but this may increase depending on the evolution of the conflict“.
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“We can imagine that Poland is beginning to have difficulty in responding and that a country like France can come to support“, he explained, believing that it is necessary to be”ready“to this eventuality.”Our associations are and discussions with the public authorities are continuing“, assured the president of the FAS calling to set up “a professional and adapted reception system“.
The low number of reception of Ukrainian refugees in France “is no surprise“, has also analyzed Pascal Brice: “Refugees fleeing these kinds of atrocities seek refuge first in their own country, then in the nearest countries and finally in countries in which there is already a community, cultural and linguistic links.“.
“In Ukraine, we have seen a move towards the west of the country, in the Lviv region, then in the neighboring countries, in Poland, because it is the closest country and because there are old links and a strong Ukrainian community of 600,000 Ukrainians“, he continued. Moreover, according to him, the Ukrainians who come to France also come “to go to Spain or Portugal, where there is, unlike France, a long-established Ukrainian community“.