Over 3.7M people have fled Ukraine since war began, says UN

By Peter Kenny

GENEVA (AA) - More than 3.7 million people have fled Russia’s war on Ukraine, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.

Karolina Lindholm Billing, UNHCR representative in Ukraine, and another UN official told journalists at a UN press conference in Geneva that “everything has changed” for Ukraine over the past month.

At least 1,081 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and 1,707 injured since the start of the war on Feb. 24, according to UN estimates.

Billing said that she spent a week in eastern Ukraine inaugurating and visiting community centers in Avdiika and Popasna for disabled children and older people just two weeks before the war.

"These centers are now likely to be rubble, like so many other private homes and social structures that humanitarian and development partners have helped to establish and repair over the past eight years, working with local authorities and communities in eastern Ukraine," Billing said.

"Today, we are confronted with the realities of a massive humanitarian crisis that is growing by the second," she said.

- Displaced population

In one month, more than 10 million people, a quarter of the population, have been forced to run for their lives, leaving their homes and belongings.

Over 6.5 million are displaced inside Ukraine, and more than 3.7 million people have been forced to flee the country, according to Billing.

"These numbers are rising daily. Some 13 million people are estimated to be stranded in affected areas or unable to leave due to heightened security risks, destruction of bridges and roads, and lack of resources or information on where to find safety and accommodation," she said.

Before she spoke at the press conference, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, said: "Without an immediate end to the fighting, this unspeakable suffering and mass human displacement will only get worse."

Poland has taken more than 2.2 million of those fleeing Ukraine, Romania almost 573,000, while more than 376,000 have passed through Moldova and around 264,000 went to Slovakia.

Russia has also received more than 271,000 refugees.

"Long-term care facilities for people with disabilities, and older people in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Luhansk regions face an appalling humanitarian situation," said Matilda Bogner, head of the UN Human Rights Office Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

She spoke by phone from Uzhhorod in the west of the country.

Bogner said that the extent of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian objects "strongly suggests that the principles of distinction, proportionality, and rule on feasible precautions and the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks have been violated."

"To give you two examples: on 3 March, 47 civilians were killed when two schools and several apartment blocks in Chernihiv were destroyed, and all indications are that these were the result of Russian airstrikes," she said.

Bogner said Mariupol Hospital No.3 was destroyed on March 9, adding that most likely, this was the result of a Russian airstrike.

There, 17 civilians, including children and pregnant women, were injured, she said.

"One injured woman was helped to deliver by Caesarean section soon after the attack, but neither she nor her baby survived. The doctors operated on them by candlelight.," said the UN official.

She said that the rights office is also looking into allegations of indiscriminate shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces in Donetsk and other territories controlled by the self-proclaimed "republics" recognized as independent by Russia.