The 4th day of the war: UN reported 368 thousand refugees from Ukraine so far

HUNGARY - In Brief 27 Feb 2022 by Istvan Racz

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These people have fled mainly to Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova. Hungary's share is 62k refugees cumulatively today.Receiving refugees near the border is starting to cost government money, but the costs are very substantially lower than one would think on the basis of arrival numbers. This is because most refugees arrived so far are travelling on to relatives, in most cases to family members who stay in the aforementioned states as guest workers. In Hungary's case, most refugees carry Hungarian passports, especially as Ukrainian men of military service age are not allowed to leave the country. So most of the time, humanitarian services on the Hungarian side are extended by local governments and civil organisations, which are operating transit stations for refugees waiting for a relative to pick them up and transport them to a final destination somewhere in the country.We suspect that the case may be similar in other recipient countries as well. E.g. in Poland, where so far some 156k arrivals have been reported, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian guest workers usually stay, and we think that many refugees may be their family members.Meanwhile, Hungary's government offered Budapest as a possible venue for talks between Russia and Ukraine. Previously, Ukrainian president Zelensky rejected to talk to Russia in Belarus, which was a Russian proposal, saying that any of Budapest, Bratislava, Warsaw or Baku would be acceptable. Most lately, the news is that the talks may still start somewhere near the border of Ukraine and Belarus.Domestically, opposition leader Péter Márki-Zay has started to call PM Orbán a traitor as well, in addition to calling him a thief, ...