Mar 18, 2022 - World

UN: 6.5 million people displaced inside Ukraine

Erin Doherty

A Ukrainian elderly woman is seen on the empty street in Kyiv, following the citys 35 hour curfew, amid Russian attacks, in Kyiv, Ukraine, 16, March 2022 — A Ukrainian elderly woman is seen on the empty street in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 16, 2022. Photo: Ceng Shou Yi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Nearly 6.5 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine since Russia's invasion, the UN migration agency wrote in a paper out Friday.

Driving the news: "The group agreed that the figures provided by IOM are a good representation of the scale of internal displacement in Ukraine — calculated to stand at 6.48 million internally displaced persons in Ukraine as of March 16th," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs wrote.

The big picture: The number of displaced individuals is on top of the more than 3.2 million refugees who have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion, according to the UN refugee agency.

More than 1.5 million children have fled Ukraine since Feb. 24, according to UNICEF spokesperson James Elder.
The estimates out Friday suggest Ukraine is on track to match the levels of displacement from Syria's war in three weeks, AP reports. That conflict has displaced about 13 million people.

Go deeper: UN: Over 3.2 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russian invasion began

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UN: 6.5 million people displaced inside Ukraine

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