Refugee Flows to Europe
As of November 15, 2022, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that more than 7.8 million refugees, half of which are estimated to be children, had fled hostilities in Ukraine, with Poland receiving the highest number of any European country. Other neighboring countries—Hungary, Moldova, Romania, and Slovakia—also have received large numbers of refugees, although many have continued moving west to Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and France, and a significant number have arrived in Turkey.
Figure I. Ukraine Refugee Crisis
Sources: Created by CRS. Refugee data from UNHCR; boundaries from U.S. Department of State.
U.S. officials estimate Russian authorities have forcibly sent between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians to Russia; an unknown number of other people reportedly have moved from Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions to the Russian Federation and Belarus, but their number and status are unclear. As of November 15, UNHCR reported nearly 2.9 million Ukrainian refugees in Russia and Belarus combined.
