More than 1.2 million people have fled Ukraine, UN agency says

People, mostly women and children, try to get onto a train bound for Lviv, at the Kyiv railway station, Ukraine (Andriy Dubchak/AP)

More than 1.2 million people have left Ukraine since the fighting began, according to the UN refugee agency.

More than 165,000 people left the country on Thursday, down slightly from Wednesday’s count and well under the nearly 200,000 on Tuesday, which amounted to the peak one-day outflow of people from Ukraine since the conflict began, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

(PA Graphics)

Its data portal on Ukraine showed that the majority, about 650,000, had gone to neighbouring Poland, and roughly 145,000 had fled to Hungary.

Another 103,000 were in Moldova and more than 90,000 in Slovakia.

Zlata, 3, fleeing the conflict from neighbouring Ukraine with her face painted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag stands at the Romanian-Ukrainian border, in Siret, Romania (Andreea Alexandru/AP)

UNHCR spokesperson Shabia Mantoo said “we know that the majority are women, children and the elderly”, but she was unable to provide a more specific breakdown by age or gender.