Some 1,20,000 Ukrainians seek refuge fleeing to the border:

Warsaw: Tens of thousands of Ukrainians rushed to the borders as invading Russian troops push their advance into Ukraine and toward the country’s capital on Saturday in Europe’s largest ground war since World War II.

Some walked many miles through the night while others fled by train, car or bus, forming lines miles long at border crossings.

They were greeted by waiting relatives and friends or headed on their own to reception centers organised by governments.

With the world revolted at Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, a Western-looking democracy, there was a huge outpouring of support for the fleeing Ukrainians. This included an unconditional welcome from nations like Poland that often did not want to accept those fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa in past years.

Nearly 120,000 people have so far fled Ukraine into Poland and other neighbouring countries in the wake of Russian invasion, the UN refugee agency said Saturday.

The largest numbers were arriving in Poland, where 2 million Ukrainians have already settled to work in recent years, driven away by Russia’s first incursion into Ukraine when it annexed



Crimea in 2014 and seeking opportunities in the booming economy of the European Union neighbour.

Poland’s government said Saturday that more than 100,000 Ukrainians had crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border in the past 48 hours alone.

At the Medyka border crossing, the line of vehicles waiting to enter Poland stretched 15 kilometers (9 miles) into Ukraine.

Poland declared its border open to fleeing Ukrainians, even for those without official documents, and dropped its requirement to show a negative COVID-19 test.

“We will help everyone,” the Polish Border Agency said. “We will not leave anyone without help.” On Saturday, Poland sent a hospital train to pick up those wounded in the war in Mostyska, in western Ukraine, and bring them to the Polish capital of Warsaw for treatment.

The hospital train left the border town of Przemysl and has five carriages to transport the wounded and four others stocked with humanitarian aid for Ukraine’s Lviv district.

Those arriving were mostly women, children and the elderly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday banned men of military age from 18 to 60 from leaving the country.