As of Tuesday, more than 8 million Ukrainian refugees have fled across Europe in the year since Russia invaded its sovereign neighbor, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.
The UNHCR’s data found that the largest number of those refugees—more than 1.5 million—have been taken in by Poland. More than a million refugees found homes in Germany, while the Czech Republic took in nearly half a million.
While the vast majority of Ukrainians have settled in Europe, a separate set of data from the Statista Research Department found that in fiscal year 2022—which ended September 30—the U.S. accepted a total of 1,610 Ukrainian refugees. The U.S. accepted another 513 Ukrainian refugees between October and the end of January.
Meanwhile, the charity organization Save the Children has been operating in Poland since February 2022, according to director of program operations in Poland Celina Kretkowska-Adamowicz. She told ABC News that one year into the war, “the biggest need is financial support.”
Between October 2022 and February 2023, the UNHCR surveyed more than 17,000 Ukrainian refugees in Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Among its findings, 87% of its respondents were female, with an average age of 45 and an average household size of 2.4—86% of which consisted of women and children.
Further, 79% of those refugees who responded to the UNHCR survey had completed higher education or university, and 60% were employed or self-employed before fleeing Ukraine. Currently, however, only 36% of those refugees are employed in their host country, remotely employed or self-employed.
And of those refugees surveyed who were displaced because of the war in Ukraine, 24% said they have visited home at least once since they initially left.
