The U.N. refugee agency said Wednesday that more than 4 million refugees have now fled Ukraine, a number that already exceeds the worst-case predictions made when Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24.
“I do not believe in a truce,” said Konstantynova, who fled to Romania with her 8-year-old son a month ago. She says they will only return when “bombs stop exploding in my city” and “when Russian troops completely leave our territory.”
Olha Kovalyova, who arrived in Poland with her two children, said she didn't trust Moscow because it had failed to fulfill earlier promises made in the framework of 2014 and 2015 agreements aimed at ending fighting between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region. “I think it’s a tragic milestone," Alex Mundt, the UNHCR senior emergency coordinator in Poland, said."It means that in less than a month or in just about a month, 4 million people have been uprooted from their homes, from their families, their communities, in what is the fastest exodus of refugees moving in recent history.”
“Refugees from Ukraine are now 4 million, five weeks after the start of the Russian attack,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi tweeted Wednesday as he crossed into Ukraine. UNHCR projected from the onset that about 4 million people might flee Ukraine and said it was regularly reassessing its forecasts.