More than 120,000 Ukrainians have fled the country, says UN

United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly Clements told CNN that up to 4 million people could try to cross borders as the crisis in Ukraine continues.

This Saturday morning (26), from the Swiss capital, Geneva, Clements told CNN that people were having to make “life and death decisions”, with 850,000 people internally displaced while more than 120,000 people fled Ukraine.

“We’ve had a humanitarian crisis in the country for the past eight years and it’s gotten much worse. In addition to these 850,000 IDPs mainly in the east, we know that more than 100,000 people are already on the move.”

Clements said there were queues at several border posts and many Ukrainians were monitoring the situation. She added that “many more” would follow the “large number” of refugees who have already crossed into neighboring Moldova.

“Now we see more than 120,000 people who have gone to all neighboring countries. And I have to say that the reception they are getting from the local communities, from the local authorities, is tremendous,” said Clements.

“But it’s a dynamic situation, we’re really devastated, obviously, with what’s to come, and we would say that up to 4 million people can actually cross bordersif things continue to deteriorate, which has happened so far.”
The latest estimate of displaced people is a big increase from the figures cited by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Friday when he said more than 50,000 people had fled Ukraine in the previous 48 hours.

The Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees called for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, saying that “international humanitarian law requires it” and that people’s lives “are literally being taken in this conflict”.

“So far, those borders are open, and that’s tremendously important in a dynamic situation like this,” added Clements.

Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary welcome Ukrainians

As Russian forces launched coordinated cruise missile and artillery attacks on several cities, including the capital Kiev, fearful families crowded the borders of the European Union in hopes of entering Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.

In the Hungarian border town of Beregsurany, 69-year-old Ilona Varga entered the European Union on foot, leaving behind his home, shop and hopes to be able to return soon.

“My kids are telling me to go to Hungary for good, and they are right,” Varga said. “But it’s so hard to leave everything behind, I was born here, I grew up here, I have my job here, everything ties me here.”

In Poland, which has the region’s largest Ukrainian community of about 1 million people, an additional 9,000 people have crossed the border since 7 am on Saturday, Deputy Interior Minister Pawel Szefernaker told a news conference.

In Medyka in southern Poland, about 85 kilometers from Lviv in western Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainians waited for authorities to process them as refugees.

“I arrived today at 3 am and am waiting for my wife,” Taras, 25, told Reuters on the Polish side of the crossing. “She called me from the Ukrainian side and there is a 30km line of cars and people. She said she doesn’t know when she’s going to cross.”

Czech railways sent special trains that arrived at the Polish border at dawn on Saturday carrying Ukrainians living in the Czech Republic to meet family members who had escaped the war.

In the Slovak border town of Ubla, authorities placed refugees in a local gym where folding beds and air mattresses filled a basketball court. Volunteers handed out sandwiches while children laughed and played with the donated stuffed animals.

“We arrived at the border by taxi and are going to Prague to meet my husband, safely,” Miroslava Krackovska said at the reception center.

One woman gasped and wiped away tears at the news on her cell phone, quickly handing the phone to the woman next to her.

Two buses carrying ethnic Bulgarians from Odessa arrived in Bulgaria on Saturday morning and a third was on its way. Bulgaria sent another four buses to Kiev to evacuate people from its minority of 250,000 in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian woman married to a Bulgarian described the bombing of her town and another recounted her struggle to escape.

“For two days we sat in our luggage, hiding in the toilets,” Tanya Mitova, an ethical Bulgarian, told national channel BNT shortly after arriving in the northeast village of Durankulak, near the Romanian border.

“There were bombings, planes were flying, it was very scary.”

(Reported from Reuters, with reporting by Anita Komuves in Beregsurany, Hungary; Pawel Florkiewicz in Medyka, Poland; Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia and Jiri Skacel in Ubla; writing by Michael Kahn; editing by Ros Russell)

Source: CNN Brasil

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