EU braces to embrace millions of refugees

Brussels: The European Union has promised that all war refugees from Ukraine will be accepted. So does that mean all of them or just Ukrainians? The EU then had to clarify it also meant African students from Kyiv.

"I don't know how many will come," EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson replied at the special meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels when asked what influx of refugees from Ukraine she expects. "I think we will have to prepare for millions." By Sunday, four days after the Russian attack began, at least 200,000 people, mostly children, women, and elderly men had entered Poland, according to the Polish Border Guard. Men considered fit for military service are currently not allowed to leave Ukraine.

Estimates by the United Nations and refugee organizations put the number of people fleeing the Russian invasion at 4 to 7 million. How many will then actually want to cross Ukraine's borders depends entirely on how the military situation in this war develops.

Yet how long they want or need to stay depends on who wins or ends this war. If Russia stops its attacks and withdraws, the families could also quickly return to their fathers, sons and brothers, EU officials believe.

What is clear is that the expected arrivals will far exceed the so-called "refugee summer" of 2015, when about 1 million refugees and asylum-seekers arrived in Central Europe, primarily to Germany, from Syria's war zone. To date, the EU member states have not been able to find a solidarity-based distribution mechanism for such refugee flows. Legally speaking, the states of first entry are responsible for processing the asylum applications. But countries like Poland, Hungary or Austria in the past have at times refused to accept asylum-seekers at all. Solidarity on the migration issue has been the biggest bone of contention in the EU. But the situation now is completely differ Refugees from Ukraine have been crossing at land borders of neighboring countries, like Slovakia.