Over 4.4 million Ukrainians fled country, says UN

More than 4.4 million Ukrainian refugees have fled their country since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion on February 24, according to figures from the UN refugee agency.

The UNHCR said there were 4,441,663 Ukrainian refugees on Saturday.

That was 59,347 more than the previous day.

Europe has not seen such a flood of refugees since World War II.

Ninety percent of those who have fled Ukraine are women and children, as the Ukrainian authorities do not allow men of military age to leave.

According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), around 210,000 non-Ukrainians have also fled the country, sometimes encountering difficulties returning to their home countries.

The United Nations estimates that 7.1 million people have been displaced within the country, according to figures published by the IOM on April 5.

More than 11 million people, or more than a quarter of the population, have been forced to flee their homes, cross the border into neighbouring countries or seek refuge elsewhere in Ukraine.

Before the conflict, Ukraine was home to more than 37 million people in territory controlled by Kyiv — which does not include Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, or areas in the east under the control of pro-Russian separatists.

Poland hosts by far the largest number of refugees. Since February 24, 2,564,994 have entered Poland, according to the UNHCR.

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Many of them then travel to other European countries. Of those who remain in Poland, 700,000 have already been granted a national identification number, the UNHCR said Friday. The number is widely used in dealings with Polish public institutions, health services, telephone numbers and access to certain banking services.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)