“Hundreds of thousands” of migrants, many said to be coming from Ukraine, are now expected to arrive in Europe over the coming months, the head of one NGO has claimed.
Jan Egeland, the secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, has claimed that “hundreds of thousands” more migrants from war-torn Ukraine will likely arrive in Europe over the coming months.
While many EU member states continue to wrestle with either addressing or silencing these concerns, Egeland believes the situation is likely to get even worse due to winter weather and Russian strikes rendering much of Ukraine “unlivable”.
“Nobody knows how many, but there will be hundreds of thousands more (leaving Ukraine) as the horrific and unlawful bombing of civilian infrastructure makes life unliveable in too many places,” news agency Reuters reports the head of the non-profit as saying.
She went on to express fear that the conflict could overshadow other humanitarian issues across the world of similar importance.
Investigating Egeland’s claim, Reuters notes a spokesman from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as saying that while data has not yet indicated a “significant increase in border crossings”, small rises in arrivals from Romania and Poland have already been seen.
As the Ukraine War rages on with no sign of stopping, migrants continue to pour over the borders of many EU countries ostensibly for the purposes of escaping war and persecution.
However, while a huge number of arrivals in Western Europe are legitimate Ukrainian refugees, not all are. According to the Financial Times, the number of migrants arriving from north Africa, the Middle East and Asia is at its highest level since the 2015-2016 European migrant crisis.
Furthermore, some politicians have expressed concern that many refugees ostensibly arriving from Ukraine actually have their origin in another country, with one publication in the country claiming that as many as one in three alleged Ukrainian refugees in France actually comes from somewhere else.
“[T]oday a third of the refugees who pass through Ukraine who do not come from Ukraine, but… come from sub-Saharan Africa in particular… [they] use this new migratory route to come to Europe,” French MEP Nicolas Bay previously remarked, seemingly in reference to the research.
“There are those who come for economic reasons, who weigh down our public accounts and our social accounts, and the Ukrainians towards whom we have a duty of European solidarity, of course,” he went on to say.