Tens of thousands of Ukrainians, mainly women and children, continue to pour across the country's western borders to flee fighting between invading Russian troops and Ukrainian forces amid warnings from the European Union that Moscow's unprovoked war risks displacing "over 7 million people."
The UN refugee agency said on February 27 that some 368,000 people had fled Ukraine over the four days since Russia launched its attack, with most entering EU members such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia.
"We are witnessing what could become the largest humanitarian crisis on our European continent in many, many years," Janez Lenarcic, the EU commissioner for crisis management, said on February 27 after a meeting of EU interior ministers focused on the refugee flow out of Ukraine.
"Currently, the expected number of displaced Ukrainians is over 7 million people," he said, noting these were "rough estimates" from the United Nations as fighting on the ground prevented it from being able to make a more accurate assessment.
At the southeastern Polish city of Zamosc near the border with Ukraine, officials said about 4,000 refugees were being settled as locals scrambled to collect humanitarian aid.
One Ukrainian woman already on the Polish side of the border told Current Time she was anxiously awaiting instructions as to where she should go next.
The woman, who said she was from the central Ukrainian city of Kryviy Rih, almost 1,000 kilometers away, said her children remained inside Ukraine and had told her, "They are bombarding everything here!"
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said more than 65,000 Ukrainians had arrived in his country over the past four days, with more expected after the government said it will allow all citizens and legal residents of Ukraine to enter Hungary as refugees.
"Hungary has a role to play in humanitarian disaster response and relief," Szijjarto said, adding that the government would send 100,000 liters of gasoline and diesel fuel to Ukrainian authorities for use by emergency services.
Meanwhile, the state railway company MAV said it would issue refugees a free "solidarity ticket" to any destination in Hungary to allow them to join friends or relatives.
Almost 50,000 Ukrainians have entered Romania, according to officials in the southeastern Balkan state, with about half leaving soon for other countries.
Moldova, which shares a long border with Ukraine, is also seeing a massive influx of refugees.
Authorities said that since the start of the invasion, more than 70,000 Ukrainian citizens had entered the tiny country of about 3.5 million people.