Warsaw, Poland (AP) – After spending time without electricity and water in the basement of her family’s home in Ukraine, Victoria Savichkina bravely fled the besieged city of Mariupol with her 9 and 14 -year -old children. daughter.
Their home is now a large convention center in the Polish capital. Savichkina said she saw the picture of a dilapidated house in Mariupol. A 40-year-old accountant from a foreign camping cot thinks he will start a new life for himself and his children.
“I don’t know where we’re going, how it’s going to happen,” Savichkina said. “I want to go home, of course. I can use it here in Poland ”.
with the war in Ukraine As the eight weeks approach, more than 5 million people have fled the country since Russian troops attacked on February 24, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday.
When the number reached 4 million on March 30, the deportation surpassed the worst prediction of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.
Russia is a bigger step in the biggest refugee crisis in Europe after World War II It has launched a massive attack on eastern Ukraine, which will prevent and end more lives.
The pre -war population in Ukraine was 44 million, and the UNHCR said the conflict had evacuated more than 7 million people to Ukraine, including 5.03 million who left on Wednesday. According to the agency, another 13 million people were imprisoned in war -torn regions of Ukraine.
“We have seen that about a quarter of the Ukrainian population, more than 12 million people in total, have been forced to flee their homes, so surprising number of people,” a UNHCR spokesman told The Associated Press. Shabia Mantoum.
More than half of the refugees, more than 2.8 million, still flee to Poland. They can get national identification numbers, which give them the right to work, free health care, school and bonuses to children.
While many remained there, an unknown number went to other countries. Savichkina said she was thinking of bringing her daughters to Germany.
“We hope to live there, send our children to school, find a job and start living from scratch,” he told the Global EXPO Center in Warsaw, which provides primary housing for approximately 800 refugees.
If “it’s okay, if the kids want it in the first place, then we will stay. Or not… “- says Savichkina.
Further south, Hungary has become a transit point for Ukrainian refugees. Of the more than 465,000 who came, about 16,400 applied for protection status, which means they want to stay. Many in Ukraine are Hungarian ethnic minorities.
The Hungarian government says it has allocated approximately $ 8.7 million to various charities and provides subsidies to companies employing Ukrainian asylum seekers.
In March, the NGO Migration Aid leased an entire five -story building in Budapest, a former workers ’dormitory, to provide temporary shelter for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. So far it has helped approximately 4,000 refugees.
Tatiana Shulieva, 67, a retired epidemiologist who fled Kharkov in eastern Ukraine and wanted to travel to Egypt, said the night she spent at the hostel was “like a fairy tale” after fleeing the ongoing basement bombing for several week.
Neighboring Romania has received more than 750,000 refugees from Ukraine. Oksana Kotus, who fled to the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv with her four young children, initially decided to go to Denmark, but went to Bucharest because she speaks Romanian and did not want to be away from Ukraine.
He praised the assistance received from the International Committee of the Red Cross in its relocation and installation.
European refugee-hosting countries say they need international help to handle the challenge, especially now that Russia has stepped up attacks in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“If we have a second wave of refugees, there will be a real problem, because we are opportunities. We will never get it,” Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski told The Associated Press.
About 300,000 war refugees live in the city, which is home to about 1.8 million people, most of them staying in private homes, Trzaskowski said. Warsaw residents have been waiting for refugees for several months, but not indefinitely, he said.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited a refugee center in Lviv, Ukraine on Tuesday, consisting of mobile modules developed by the joint Ukrainian and Polish governments to settle internally displaced people unwilling to leave Ukraine .
Refugee organizations say the best help is to end the war.
“Unfortunately, without an immediate cessation of hostilities, the unspeakable suffering and massive displacement we are witnessing will only worsen,” Mantumo, UNHCR said.
Polish data shows that up to 738,000 people migrated to Ukraine during the war. Some of them go back and forth to Poland to shop, while others return to Ukraine to inspect relatives and property, choosing whether to stay or return depending on what they find.
According to the UNHCR, more than half of Ukrainian refugees are children. Thousands of civilians, including children, were killed or injured in the bombing and air strikes.
Mantu called the “display of support and generosity” shown to incoming Ukrainian refugees “remarkable”.
“But the important thing is to keep it and move it so that the refugees can receive this support as long as the fighting continues, until they get home,” he said.
Amer Kohajic in Sarajevo, Justin Spike in Budapest and Nikola Dumitrakh in Bucharest contributed to this speech.
Source: Huffpost
