Ukraine’s war has already led to the displacement of more than 1 million refugees just eight days after the start of Russia’s military campaign.
The figure was released by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. As of Thursday, the organization’s database recorded 1,045,459 people fleeing Ukraine, in what the Associated Press news agency called “the fastest refugee exodus of the century”.
For comparison purposes, the number of displaced persons is equivalent to the population of Brazilian capitals such as Maceió and Campo Grande. It also accounts for just over 2% of the entire Ukrainian population.
About 200,000 new refugees were registered by the UNHCR this Wednesday (2) alone. The agency’s database has been updated every morning since February 24 – on the first day of the conflict, the UN and the European Commission counted between 100,000 and 120,000 displaced people.
“It is time for the guns to be silenced so that humanitarian assistance can be provided in Ukraine,” Filippo Grandi, UNHCR’s high commissioner, wrote on social media.
Approximately half a million people have moved to Poland, by far the country that has received the most refugees from the conflict. Warsaw shares more than 500 kilometers of border with Kiev. Hungary follows with 116,000, followed by neighboring countries such as Moldova, Slovakia and Romania. There are also 47,800 who have traveled to Russia.
Faced with the thousands of people crossing Ukrainian borders every day, European Union countries reached an agreement on Thursday to grant temporary protection to war refugees and their families. They will have the right to stay and work in the bloc’s countries for up to three years.
In addition to Ukrainians, the measure extends to foreigners who have refugee status in Kiev and foreigners with a certificate of residence, but it leaves out non-Ukrainians who were studying or working temporarily in the country.
The European Union adopted a temporary protection directive in 2001 for people fleeing armed conflict, but the mechanism had never been implemented. It is the first time that Member States have decided to activate the regulation.
As part of the agreement, countries such as Austria, Hungary and Poland have raised objections against granting asylum to non-Ukrainians. Black immigrants have claimed to be victims of racism as they try to move, being stopped on trains, buses and at the borders by guards or other Ukrainian citizens.
Grandi welcomed the EU’s decision, calling it unprecedented. “It will provide protection to millions of people. We encourage its rapid and widespread application,” he wrote.
The displacements should continue in the coming days and, depending on the worsening of the conflict, could involve up to 5 million residents, according to calculations by international entities – the total population of Ukraine is about 44 million.
The NGO International Rescue Committee has already stated that the wave of refugees in Europe now has a real possibility of being greater than what occurred in the 1990s, when conflicts related to the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia caused the displacement within and outside the borders of about 4.4 million people.
According to Caritas Ukraine, linked to the Catholic Church, the crisis generated by the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to the mobilization of 1.5 million people. The situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border, which had already been monitored for the past six months, had already left nearly 3 million people in need of humanitarian aid.
In the midst of the war, Vladimir Putin’s forces are accused of hitting civilian targets and using cluster bombs – a type of weapon prohibited by an international treaty, in force since 2010, with the accession of more than 100 countries.
This type of ammunition releases smaller projectiles in the act of explosion, amplifying the area of ​​damage and, consequently, the risk of death and injury. In addition, some of these projectiles can act as small bombs that, if not detonated immediately, become, in practice, a kind of land mine.
For the time being, EU members have not started formal discussions on the distribution of refugees among the bloc’s countries.
