UN refugee agency: 1 million flee Ukraine in under a week
Source: AP
By JAMEY KEATEN
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. refugee agency said Thursday that 1 million people have now fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion less than a week ago, an exodus without precedent in this century for its speed.
The tally from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees amounts to more than 2% of Ukraine’s population — which the World Bank counted at 44 million at the end of 2020 — on the move across borders in just seven days. The agency cautions that the outflows are far from finished: It has predicted that as many as 4 million people could eventually leave Ukraine, and even that projection could be revised upward.
In an email, UNHCR spokeswoman Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams wrote, “Our data indicates we passed the 1M mark” as of midnight in central Europe, based on counts collected by national authorities.
U.N. High Commissioner Filippo Grandi said in a statement: “I have worked in refugee emergencies for almost 40 years, and rarely have I seen an exodus as rapid as this one.”
A woman runs as she flees with her family across a destroyed bridge in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 2. 2022. Russia renewed its assault Wednesday on Ukraine’s second-largest city in a pounding that lit up the skyline with balls of fire over populated areas, even as both sides said they were ready to resume talks aimed at stopping the new devastating war in Europe. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
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