(NEW YORK) — At least 677,243 people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries since Russian forces invaded the eastern European country on Feb. 24, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.
The majority of refugees have escaped to Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. However, many other unidentified Ukrainians continue to flee across Europe, the UN agency said.
At the Polish border, UNHCR staff reported lines that were miles long. In Romania, people were waiting up to 20 hours to enter, according to agency staff.
The 37-mile trek from the Ukraine city of Odessa to the border of Moldova took some refugees 24 hours to make, the agency said.
In Hungary, arrivals were “steady and waiting times vary.”
Ukrainian citizens have also been displaced within the country, according to Filippo Grandi, the UNHCR commissioner, but it is unknown how many at this time. He also said there is a “growing number of unaccompanied and separated children.”
More than 470,000 non-Ukrainian people, “including a large number of overseas students and labor migrants,” remain in the country as well, according to the International Organization for Migration.
In what Russian President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation,” Russian forces continue to try and push through Ukraine, as Ukrainian forces hold steady in the fight.
So far, at least 536 civilian casualties have been recorded in the conflict, 136 of whom have been killed, according to the U.N.
Many reasons have been cited as Putin’s reasoning for the attacks, including the threat of Ukraine’s membership in NATO, the western military alliance. But Putin has also tried to question Ukraine’s legitimacy as a country and claimed that the country needed to be liberated from Nazis.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to remain in Kyiv and fight against Russian forces.
“We are all here. Our military are here, as are our people and whole society,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted to Facebook. “We’re all here defending our independence and our country. And we’ll go on doing that. Glory to our defenders! Glory to Ukraine.”
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