Germany Asked Poland to Halt Ukrainian Refugee Trains

Photo credit: PAP/Radek Pietruszka

Warsaw has been asked to stop sending Ukrainian refugees by train to Germany because Berlin can’t cope with the influx of people fleeing conflict, Poland’s Deputy Interior Minister, Pavel Shefernaker, told news channel TVN24 on Monday.

Shefernaker was allegedly asked to suspend special trains that go to Germany by the German Interior Ministry, which told them there’s already a bottleneck situation in the country since the scale of the refugee wave from Ukraine took the European countries by surprise.

According to the Polish minister’s information, in just three days more than 28,000 had left Poland by train while around 1.5 million refugees remain behind in need of a location to temporarily resettle while the conflict continues.

United Nations data shows that after Russia’s military attack on February 24, more than 2.8 million people have fled Ukraine with refugees crossing daily into neighboring Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia in pursuit of safety before moving on to other nations.

The Czech Republic, where about 30,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived as of March 4, informed in early March that the government would support its citizens who provide refugees with housing, allocating for them 1,000 crowns (about €40) for five months.

Stressing that Poland is counting on European solidarity to overcome the crisis, Shefernaker reminded European nations that they must all support each other despite the request from Germany, where some 15,000 Ukrainians are arriving every day.

France also pointed out that it can accept no more than 25.000 people after the French authorities announced on March 12 that more than 10,000 Ukrainians had entered the country.

The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said on March 6 that, in total, over 1.2 million refugees have arrived in EU countries since the start of the military operation in Ukraine.

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