(Geneva) More than 660,000 people fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine have flocked to neighboring countries, and the numbers are increasing “exponentially”, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.
Posted at 8:14 a.m.
“We now have more than 660,000 refugees who have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries in the last six days alone,” UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo told a press briefing in Geneva. “The numbers are growing exponentially […] At this rate, the situation looks set to become Europe’s biggest refugee crisis of the century. »
All neighboring countries have so far kept their borders open to refugees fleeing Ukraine – a “not inconsiderable number” of whom have gone to Russia, Ms.me Mantoo.
“UNHCR urges governments to continue to maintain access to territory for all those fleeing: Ukrainians and third-country nationals living in Ukraine,” she said.
During a press conference in Stockholm, the UNHCR representative in Ukraine, Karolina Lindholm Billing, also assessed the number of internally displaced persons at one million.
“We estimate that there must be around one million people who have fled internally or who are currently on a train, bus or car trying to get to safety,” he said. she explains.
At the Polish border, UNHCR staff reported that those who made it through had waited up to 60 hours in freezing temperatures, according to Ms.me Mantoo.
Queues to enter Romania, where volunteers act as interpreters, can last up to 20 hours, she added, and it takes 24 hours to travel the 60 kilometers between the Ukrainian city of Odessa and the border with Moldova.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), around 470,000 third-country nationals live in Ukraine, including a large number of foreign students and migrant workers.
“While the arrival of 6,000 of them has been confirmed in Moldova and Slovakia alone, many remain stranded in a context of deteriorating security situation,” spokeswoman Safa Msehli told reporters in Geneva.
“We call on states to protect those forced to leave their homes due to fighting and allow them to cross Ukraine’s borders to safety without discrimination,” she added.