Ukraine: Europe’s Largest Migration

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), both agencies dealing with refugees and migration, warned that the number of people who have been forced to flee their homes in recent months has reached nearly 14 million. Of these, nearly 6 million had to cross borders to seek safety in other countries.

As a result, the war in Ukraine has become the largest migration crisis in Europe since World War II. The last major conflict, in the Balkans in the 1990s, left three million people displaced in other countries.

Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova have been the main countries to which displaced persons have chosen to emigrate, although there are also thousands of these refugees who have not remained in neighboring countries but have continued their journey to other EU member states. The figures, however, are uncertain, since most migratory movements occur spontaneously, driven in many cases by family networks.

Spain was one of the first countries to adopt a system to regularize the status of refugees from the war in Ukraine. The government also decided to ensure protection for other individuals even if they did not fall under the provisions of European legislation: foreign residents in Ukraine, regardless of the duration of their residence permit, and Ukrainians who were residing in Spain without proper documentation before the start of the Russian invasion.

Since this system was activated to provide protection in Spain, more than 70,000 displaced persons from Ukraine have already obtained legal status. This figure includes both people who have fled the war-torn country since February 24 and Ukrainians who were living in Spain without legal status and have since regularized their status. As we’ve noted before, family networks are crucial in determining the destination country for migration flows. And, according to Eurostat data, Spain is the European country with the fourth-highest number of Ukrainian residents, trailing only Poland, Italy, and the Czech Republic.