Knaus warns of a Kremlin victory
Migration researchers: We are in the middle of a historic refugee crisis
March 24, 2024, 7:56 p.m
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If Ukraine is defeated, migration researcher Gerald Knaus expects millions of refugees. Further support for the country is therefore the “most important way to combat the causes of flight in Europe”.
Migration researcher Gerald Knaus has warned of serious consequences if Ukraine were to be subjugated by Russia. “If Putin gets his way and Ukraine loses the war, that could make another ten million people refugees,” Knaus told the “Tagesspiegel”.
According to Knaus, the “most important fight against the causes of flight for Europe” today is support for Ukraine. “We are in the middle of a historic refugee crisis in Europe that could dwarf any crisis that has occurred anywhere in the world since the 1940s,” he added. The migration expert criticized that there is currently a lack of “a convincing strategy to prevent the worst-case scenario or to prepare ourselves for it in the EU.”
On Friday, “Spiegel”, citing a response from the Federal Ministry of the Interior to the CDU interior expert Alexander Throm, reported that around 1.65 million Ukrainians were registered with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) as of March 12th. A year ago there were 1.4 million. However, possible re-exits are not taken into account in the data.
According to “Spiegel”, Bamf boss Hans-Eckhard Sommer recently said in the Bundestag’s Interior Committee that the number of new arrivals from Ukraine currently exceeds the number of new asylum applications from other countries. “We have to assume that most of the Ukrainians who are coming now can be accommodated by the state,” said Sommer.
According to a report from the “European Stability Initiative” (ESI) think tank headed by Knaus, which is available to the “Tagesspiegel”, 1.2 million applications for protection from refugees from Ukraine were registered in Germany last December. A year earlier there were 1.02 million.