The biggest refugee crisis of the century in Europe is brewing

Afp and Ap

Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, March 3, 2022, p. 4

Kyiv. The number of Ukrainians who have fled to neighboring countries has crossed the one million mark since the conflict began, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported yesterday.

The escalation of the Russian attack on Ukraine has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country in the past six days.in what a United Nations official predicted could become the largest refugee crisis of Europe in this century.

The UNHCR detailed hours earlier that more than 874,000 people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began last week, and later said that figure is increasing exponentiallyheading yesterday to cross the million mark .

More than half of those refugees – almost 454,000 – have moved to Poland, while more than 116,300 have entered Hungary and another 79,300 have crossed into Moldova. Meanwhile, 67,000 have fled to Slovakia, and some 69,000 have gone to other European nations.

While most of those fleeing are healthy adults who decide to face long and sometimes dangerous journeys to get themselves and their families to safety, others are at the mercy of their caregivers to get them out of danger and adverse weather.

These children need a lot of attention, suffer from diseases and require special carewarned Larissa Leonidovna, director of the Svytoshinksy orphanage in the Ukrainian capital.

Getting off the train in groups of 30, the children – also from the Darnytskyy orphanage in Kiev – were escorted to waiting buses to take them to Opole, Poland, where they would be accommodated and continue to receive care.

There are 216 people in total, the children and their caregiverssaid Viktoria Mikolayivna, deputy director of the Darnytskyy orphanage.

In the Palanca border area in southern Moldova, a country that shares a long border with Ukraine, temperatures were close to freezing.

Ukraine borders seven countries, Russia to the north and east, Belarus to the north, Poland and Slovakia to the west, and Romania, Hungary, and Moldova to the southwest.

Meanwhile, the UNHCR asked Ukraine’s neighboring countries to open their borders to all those displaced by the war in that nation, regardless of their nationality.

This occurs after Poland was singled out for preventing the entry into its territory of citizens of African origin residing in Ukraine. Poland welcomes all those fleeing the war regardless of their country of originPrime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had to come out to testify.