Up to two million people living near the front line in eastern Ukraine are at risk of being displaced if fighting resumes, the Norwegian Refugee Council warned on Thursday (February 3rd).
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“The lives and safety of millions of people in eastern Ukraine hang in the balance as we await a political breakthrough to break this stalemate.“Said the secretary general of the NGO, Jan Egeland, in a press release. “We must not underestimate the human suffering that a renewed conflict would cause, it would increase the number of civilian casualties, cause mass displacement and cause an increase in humanitarian needs.“, he noted.
Westerners have accused Russia since the end of 2021 of having massed tens of thousands of soldiers on the Ukrainian border for a military operation against Kiev, which Moscow denies. Eastern Ukraine has already been plagued since 2014 by a war between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists, a conflict that erupted after the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea by Moscow. The war, which has claimed more than 13,000 lives, has fallen sharply in intensity since peace accords in 2015, but its political settlement has since been mired. Along the front, gunfire continues to claim casualties on a regular basis. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, more than 850,000 people have already been displaced in Ukraine because of the fighting.
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An active resumption of the conflict could, according to the NGO, reduce to nothingsignificant progressof recent years in the situation of the populations of eastern Ukraine. The number of people dependent on humanitarian aid there has risen from 5 million in 2015 to 3 million today, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.