Enlarge image
Refugees rest in a tent in the Polish border village of Medyka
Photo: Visar Kryeziu / dpa
The heavy fighting in Ukraine is driving more and more people to flee.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, more than 1.5 million people have left the country.
Grandi wrote on Twitter that it was the “fastest growing refugee crisis” in Europe since the Second World War.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR has rated the situation as a level 3 emergency – the highest category.
The UN estimates that there are up to four million refugees, and a German migration researcher even estimates that up to ten million people could leave Ukraine over the course of the conflict.
The consequences of the Russian war of aggression are particularly noticeable in the countries bordering Ukraine.
According to Polish information
, 129,000 refugees were allowed into the country on Saturday alone, a new daily high.
Authorities expect the total number of arrivals to top one million on Sunday.
"Crossing the border has been simplified as much as possible," the Reuters news agency quoted a spokeswoman for the Polish border guard as saying.
The control procedures lasted only a few minutes.
According to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the majority of the refugees are Ukrainian citizens.
But there are also people from Uzbekistan, Belarus, India, Nigeria, Algeria, Morocco, the USA and several other countries.
Tens of thousands of people are also fleeing to
Romania
every day. According to the border police, 31,628 people arrived on Saturday.
The total number of Ukrainian refugees is therefore almost a quarter of a million.
According to the police,
Slovakia
had taken in 114,000 people by Sunday.
So far, the number of people coming into the country has been relatively stable, said Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger on Saturday during a visit to the Vyšné Nemecké crossing.
However, significantly more people could flee the war.
"We need to prepare for even higher numbers," Heger said.
163,000 people also reached
Hungary
.
The Prime Minister there, Viktor Orbán, actually known as a strict opponent of immigration, recently defended his decision to open the border to people from Ukraine.
»Migrants are stopped.
Refugees can all get help,” Orbán was quoted as saying by the Al-Jazeera broadcaster during a visit to a border post.
In the current situation, it is possible to distinguish between migrants and refugees, according to the prime minister.
30,000 Ukrainian children in Moldova
Thousands of war refugees have also recently arrived in the comparatively small
Moldova
, which borders on southern Ukraine.
The UNHCR reported 100,000 refugees on Friday, but the number is now likely to be higher.
Prime Minister Maia Sandu wrote on Twitter on Saturday evening that there were 30,000 Ukrainian children in the country.
"We're her family until this madness is over," Sandu said.
Berlin: Increase from 45 to 10,000 refugees - daily
The number of more than 133,000 people who have arrived in other European countries so far, given by the UNHCR on March 4, is also likely to be outdated by now.
Berlin's Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) said on Sunday morning in the ZDF "Morgenmagazin" that the city was increasingly reaching its limits when it came to the number of new arrivals.
"We have an extremely dynamic event within a week: In the beginning there were 45 people, we accommodated, now more than 10,000 come a day, and that's a huge challenge that we try to overcome with different means," explained Giffey.
On the one hand, arrival centers, refugee accommodation, hostels and youth hostels are used, on the other hand there is a great deal of private commitment.
Giffey demanded that there must now be a nationwide organization and distribution of the refugees, "because we can't do it alone on this scale with the existing structures here in Berlin".
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