Two million people have now fled from the war in Ukraine, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Tuesday.
“Today the outflow of refugees from Ukraine reaches two million people. Two million,” Grandi tweeted. In a country of approximately 44 million people, that’s about 4.5 percent of the Ukrainian population.
Most refugees have left for neighboring countries, such as Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova and Poland. Polish Health Minister Adam Niedzielski told reporters on Monday that more than 100,000 people per day are arriving in Poland, less than two weeks after Russia’s lethal invasion began.
Grandi’s remarks come as the EU agreed last week to give immediate protections and rights to Ukrainians fleeing the war, invoking for the first time a 20-year-old power designed to help shelter refugees.
Russian forces continued to bomb evacuation routes in Irpin near Kyiv and in other major cities on Monday. According to Ukrainian authorities, at least 13 civilians were killed in an airstrike on a bread factory near Kyiv. More than 700,000 Ukrainians across the country are without power, amid the Russian shelling.