Over 5 million people have crossed into Poland since Russia's war began

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Over 5 million people have crossed into Poland since Russia's war began

More than 5.5 million people have crossed the country's border since the beginning of the Russian military offensive.

Over 5 million people crossed the border from Ukraine to Poland since Russia launched its operations in the neighboring country, the Polish Border Guard reported on Monday.

The border guards have checked 5.519 million people crossing the border from Ukraine to Poland since February 24, according to the agency. There were 24,300 crossings recorded last Sunday alone, according to the agency.

Since the start of the conflict, the number of crossings from Poland into Ukraine is approaching 3.7 million, according to the data. Media reports indicate that the majority of them represent people coming back to areas considered safe or those who didn't manage to settle abroad.

UN Refugee Agency UNHCR provides a bit smaller but comparable figures of just over 5.2 million crossings from Ukraine into Poland and a little more than 3.2 million crossings from Poland into Ukraine.

In March, Warsaw gave Ukrainian nationals the right to stay legally in the country for 18 months. Nearly 1.3 million Ukrainians have been granted temporary residency status in Poland more than any other Western country, according to UNHCR statistics.

Poland stopped giving financial aid to most Ukrainians last month because of the large influx of refugees. The move was explained by Deputy Interior Minister Pawel Szefernaker, who said that many people in Poland are able to become independent and adapt. Since the first weeks of the military conflict, the volume of aid provided by individual Poles to Ukrainian refugees has been decreasing, according to a think-tank called the Polish Economic Institute. The two most popular categories of aid were the most affected by the largest decrease. After the war began, 51% of Poles bought items for refugees; after two months, this has decreased to 39%. In the beginning, 46% of Poles made cash donations, which dropped to 33%, the think-tank said in a July report.

In the period between the end of February and the end of June, Poles donated almost 10 billion zlotys $2 billion to Ukrainians. According to the report, this amount surpasses their charitable contributions for the whole of 2021.

In August, the European Commission agreed to provide more than 31 $31.6 million to help people fleeing Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the economic recovery of four Polish regions through its REACT-EU program.