The EU could see up to 4 million more Ukrainians arrive in 2023 and Russia is expected to seek to further instrumentalise migration from North Africa and the Middle East, according to the latest Migration Outlook 2023 report from the International Centre for Migration and Policy Development (ICMPD) published on 18 January.
More than 4.9 million Ukrainians have registered under the EU’s temporary protection scheme or similar schemes in other European countries since February 2022. And with the war in Ukraine showing little sign of ending soon, further arrivals are expected as 18 million Ukrainians are considered to be in urgent need of humanitarian assistance inside the country, the report says.
“In a move to further agitate Europe’s migration worries, the Russian government has announced it will increase the number of flights from North Africa and the Middle East to Kaliningrad, which borders Poland”.
The result will probably be “an uptick in the number of migrants attempting to enter the EU from a different route to the usual Mediterranean entry points”, the ICMPD warns.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/4xu (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)