5 million Ukrainian refugees .. and 800 thousand returned to Kyiv from abroad to join the army!
The number of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of their country since the end of February reached 5,133,747 people, an increase of 48,387 people, compared to a total announced two days ago.
More than 218,000 non-Ukrainians, mostly students and workers, fled the country to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, which means that the total number of people fleeing Ukraine has exceeded 5.25 million since the start of the Russian invasion.
Women and children make up about 90% of those who have fled Ukraine, while the Ukrainian authorities do not allow men of fighting age to leave.
The fighting forced nearly two-thirds of Ukrainian children to leave their homes, counting those still in Ukraine.
The United Nations estimates the number of displaced people inside Ukraine at 7.7 million.
Before this conflict, Ukraine had a population of more than 37 million in the territory controlled by Kyiv and does not include the Crimea (south) that Russia annexed in 2014, nor the eastern regions controlled by pro-Russian separatists since the same year.
About 60 percent of Ukrainian refugees, or 2,867,241 people, crossed into Poland, and a large number of them continue on to other European countries.
In parallel, more than 800,000 people crossed the Polish border into Ukraine, the majority of whom are Ukrainian men who want to join the army and residents returning to their homes, the Polish border guards announced Friday.
Before the crisis, Poland was receiving about 1.5 million Ukrainians, most of whom came to work.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees indicated that 769,616 people entered Romania, a large part of them arrived through Moldova and then continued their journey to other countries.
578,255 people sought refuge in Russia.
UNHCR also reported that between February 18 and 23, 105,000 people crossed from the pro-Russian separatist territories of Donetsk and Lugansk (eastern Ukraine) into Russia.
From the start of the conflict until April 21, Hungary received 480,974 Ukrainians.
Moldova, a small country of 2.6 million people, one of the poorest in Europe but closest to the Ukrainian port of Odessa, has received 430,170 refugees, according to UNHCR statistics.
Most of them moved to other European countries.
And 349,286 Ukrainians entered Slovakia, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, from the beginning of the war until April 21.
And Belarus, Russia's ally, received 23,900 Ukrainians.
UNHCR explains that for countries bordering Ukraine that are part of the Schengen area (Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), the figures given by the High Commissioner are for people who have crossed the border and entered the country.
UNHCR estimates that "a significant number of people have continued on to other countries".
In addition, it notes that it does not count people from neighboring countries who leave Ukraine to return home.
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