EU: The number of Ukrainians entering bloc countries has returned to pre-war levels

The number of Ukrainians crossing into EU countries has returned to pre-Russian invasion levels and more people will be moving to and from these countries by the start of the new school year, the Home Affairs commissioner in charge of immigration Ylva Johansson.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, a neighbor of both Russia to the east and EU countries to the west, more than six million Ukrainians have fled to bloc countries, the European Border Guard Agency announced at the end of June, and Coast Guard Frontex.

Almost 3.1 million of them have already returned to their homeland, according to the same source.

“In terms of migration flows, the situation today is stable. Movements between the EU and Ukraine, the numbers are like before the war, at the level before the pandemic, so we are back to an almost normal number of people going to the EU from Ukraine,” she told reporters.

Right now almost the same number of people are entering the EU returning from Ukraine, Johansson said as she arrived in Prague for the first EU Council of Home Affairs Ministers under the Czech presidency.

“I predict that many Ukrainians in the EU will make a decision before schools open — where to send their children to school, to an EU member state or back to Ukraine,” he said.

“I think in the next month a lot of people will make a decision whether to go back now or stay here longer,” she concluded.

As Johansson said, the Czech Republic is the country with the highest number of Ukrainian refugees per capita, followed by Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Latvia.

During the Council in Prague, EU interior ministers will discuss the security implications for the bloc of the war in Ukraine, including in relation to arms, people and drug trafficking as well as money laundering and counterfeiting .

SOURCE: AMPE