By Gabriela Baczynska
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union has taken in two million refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and millions more will follow, the bloc’s top migration official said on Tuesday.
Russian forces have subjected a number of Ukrainian cities and towns to devastating bombardment and left places like the port of Mariupol without power or water for days, putting to flight hundreds of thousands in the country of 44 million people.
“This will not be over soon. (Russian President Vladimir)Putin is fighting his war without remorse, restraint or mercy,” EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told the European Parliament. “More is to come. Worse is to come. Millions more will flee and we must welcome them.”
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said the number of people to have fled Ukraine in eastern and central Europe reached two million on Tuesday, amid renewed efforts to create safe evacuation corridors from cities under attack.
With virtually all of them arriving in the EU, it has let in over the course of 12 days more people than in 2015 and 2016 combined, when Syria’s war triggered the previous large immigration wave to Europe, dividing the 27-nation bloc.
Now, Johansson said, more than one million people have arrived in Poland, almost half a million in Romania and more than 100,000 in both Hungary and Slovakia, the four EU neighbours bordering Ukraine to the east.
Apart from Ukrainian nationals, some 130,000 of the refugees are Afghans and Belarusians who lived in Ukraine, as well as Indian, Nigerian and Turkish students, she said.
“Everyone fleeing the war…is allowed to cross the border and are welcome in the EU,” said Johansson, adding that only around 8,000 Ukrainians claimed asylum last week, while most travelled on to friends and family already living in the bloc.
Under an emergency decision by all 27 EU nations, Ukrainian refugees are allowed to work, send children to school, get housing and social welfare swiftly. But it remains to be seen when and how they would be distributed among member states.
Since 2015, the EU has suffered bitter internal divisions over how to share out migrants and refugees fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
As Mediterranean EU countries bearing the brunt of arrivals struggled to cope, it was only the wealthier, northern member states like Germany, Sweden or the Netherlands that agreed to host some of the mainly Muslim new arrivals.
But eastern EU countries led by Poland and Hungary refused to take in anyone, saying this would have threatened their national security and their Christian traditions.
They have now changed tack and allow in the mostly Christian Orthodox Ukrainians. Poland is among countries that had a significant and well-integrated Ukrainian diaspora before the war started on Feb. 24.
(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
