Poland’s Border Guard said Sunday that roughly 22,000 people have crossed into Ukraine since Thursday, when Russia invaded the country.
Outside a border patrol office in Przemysl, Poland, at the main train station hundreds of people were lined up to return to Ukraine.
The majority of them were men.
Among them was Janiel, who lives in Poland but decided to return and fight.
Before the recent exodus, there were an estimated 1 million Ukrainians in Poland, working or studying.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stayed in the capital Kyiv boosting the morale of Ukrainian fighters as Russian troops were closing in on the city and huge explosions lit up the sky early Sunday. Zelenskyy has banned men of military age, 18 to 60, from leaving the country.
At least 368,000 people have fled Ukraine into Poland and other neighboring countries in the wake of the Russian invasion, the U.N. refugee agency, the UNHCR, said Sunday.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has agreed to hold talks with Russia at the Belarus border, as Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian nuclear deterrent forces on high alert.
With tensions with the West soaring over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin told the Russian defense minister to put nuclear forces in a “special regime of combat duty” Sunday. He told his officials that leading NATO powers had made “aggressive statements” and imposed hard-hitting financial sanctions against Russia. VOA