More than five million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their country since Russia invaded on February 24, the United Nations has said.
In a report on Wednesday, the Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said 5.01 million Ukrainians had left the country, creating an unprecedented refugee crisis – the biggest since World War 2.
“In less than two months … we’ve seen about a quarter of Ukraine’s population, more than 12 million people in total, including five million refugees, but also 7.1 million inside the country, have been forced to flee their homes, so this is a staggering amount of people,” UNHCR spokeswoman in Geneva, Shabia Mantoo, told The Associated Press news agency.
Half of the refugees are children, the UNHCR said.
Some 2.8 million refugess are presently in Poland.