According to the United Nations, about ten million people, a quarter of the total population, have already fled the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

This was announced by the head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, Filippo Grandi, on Sunday.

According to the UNHCR, almost 3.4 million fled abroad, 2.1 million of them to Poland.

The rest are traveling within Ukraine.

According to the UN children's fund UNICEF, 1.5 million children are among the war refugees abroad.

The risk of these becoming victims of human traffickers is "real and increasing".

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.

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At the weekend, the Russian occupiers and the Ukrainian defenders again fought battles on many sectors of the front.

Apparently there were no major shifts in the front.

The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote on Saturday evening that militarily “a stalemate in most of Ukraine” was within reach.

Satellite images disseminated by Western media showed earthworks by Russian troops;

the pictures are intended to illustrate that the Russians are “digging in” north-west of Kyiv and are building earthworks.

An art school in Mariupol destroyed in bombing

Fighting continued around the city of Mariupol on the Sea of ​​Azov, which has been surrounded by Russian troops since the beginning of the month and has been shelled on a daily basis.

Fighting has reportedly reached the city center in the past few days.

According to the city's website 0629.com.ua on Sunday, around 4,000 civilians have died in Mariupol.

However, an adviser to Mayor Vadym Boychenko said the death toll confirmed by the authorities in a situation of constant fighting was far too low.

One should rather reckon with 20,000 dead civilians in the city, buried in mass graves, including in a centrally located park.

According to the city council, an art school in Mariupol was the target of a bomb attack on Saturday.

400 people had sought protection there, including women, children and the elderly, the city council said on Sunday in the Telegram messenger service.

The building was destroyed in the attack.

"People are still under the rubble." Initially, no information was given about the victims.

The city council blamed Russian troops.

In Mariupol, with its 400,000 inhabitants, the majority of whom are said to still be in the city, a theater where people had sought protection from air raids was recently bombed.

Those who were buried were rescued later.

For days it has been unclear how many dead and injured there were in this incident.

The Ukrainian governor of the region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on Ukrainian television on Sunday that residents of Mariupol were being deported to Russia by Russian troops against their will.

They would first be taken to “filtration camps” (transit camps known from the Chechen war), where their personal documents would be taken away, and then they would continue on to Russia.

Apparently, this corresponded to Russian television reports that people from Mariupol had “fled” to Russia.

Russian television showed people who were relieved to be safe.

Mayor Wadym Bojchenko compared the procedure to the removal of forced laborers during the German occupation in World War II.

"Not only that the Russian troops are destroying our peaceful Mariupol,

Claims on the Swiss group Nestlé

"The complete destruction of the infrastructure" was also reported from the city of Chernihiv, north of Kyiv.

Water, electricity and heating are no longer available, Mayor Wladyslaw Atroschenko said at the weekend.

The Russians bombarded the city with random fire.

Several demonstrations against the Russian occupiers were reported over the weekend from the Russian-speaking south of Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech on Sunday night about the events in Mariupol: "This is terror that will be remembered for centuries." The more Ukrainians told the world about it, "the more support we get", while Russia will suffer worse and worse consequences.

In a video-transmitted speech during a rally in Bern, Zelenskyy called on Swiss companies like Nestlé to pull out of Russia.

In the Ukraine war, “our children would die and our cities would be destroyed.

Help fight it.” On Sunday evening, Zelenskyy was scheduled to speak to the members of the Israeli parliament via video link.