THE UKRAINE REFUGEE CRISIS IN EUROPE
The world has seen several refugee crises over the last decade, from conflicts in the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. However, over the last few months, another migrant crisis has emerged, and once again Europe has been the focus.
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. Since then, millions of Ukrainians have fled their homes in search of refuge, with a majority heading through neighboring countries like Poland, Romania, and Russia.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, close to 6.6 million people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries. Put another way, this is the largest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII.
Poland has seen the highest number of Ukrainian refugees, with an estimated 3.5 million people crossing the border since February 24th. About a million of those refugees have been registered in Poland, and 94% of those registered refugees have been women and children.
Russia has received the third most refugees, with many of them coming from or near separatist regions in the east of Ukraine. Russia also says it helped evacuate 140,000 civilians from Mariupol, but claims that those populations were not forced to migrate to Russia.
Hungary has seen the fourth-largest influx of refugees, seeing 644,474 Ukrainians cross into the country since the start of the conflict. In recent years, the Hungarian government been in the headlines because of its views towards migrants, including in 2018, when Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made controversial comments about Syrian refugees.
