Ukrainian refugee crisis in the context of "UNHCR"

The Russo-Ukrainian war began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied Crimea and annexed it from Ukraine. It then supported Russian paramilitaries who started a war in the eastern Donbas region against Ukraine's military. In 2018, Ukraine declared the region to be occupied by Russia. The first eight years of conflict also involved naval incidents and cyberwarfare. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country, starting the current phase of the war, the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. The war has resulted in a refugee crisis and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

In early 2014, the Euromaidan protests led to the Revolution of Dignity and the ousting of Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. Shortly after, pro-Russian protests began in parts of southeastern Ukraine, while unmarked Russian troops occupied Crimea. Russia soon annexed Crimea after a highly disputed referendum. In April 2014, Russian-backed militants seized towns and cities in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) as independent states, starting the Donbas war. Russia covertly supported the separatists with its own troops, tanks and artillery, preventing Ukraine from fully retaking the territory. The International Criminal Court (ICC) judged that the war was both a national and international armed conflict involving Russia, and the European Court of Human Rights judged that Russia controlled the DPR and LPR from 2014 onward. In February 2015, Russia and Ukraine signed the Minsk II agreements, but they were never fully implemented in the following years. The Donbas war became a static conflict likened to trench warfare; ceasefires were repeatedly broken but the frontlines did not move.

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II. It is a major escalation of the war between the two countries that began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties. As of 2025, Russian troops occupy about 20% of Ukraine. From a population of 41 million, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II.

In late 2021, Russia massed troops near Ukraine's borders and issued demands to the West, including a ban on Ukraine ever joining NATO. After repeatedly denying having plans to attack Ukraine, on 24 February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation", saying that it was to support the Russian-backed breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, whose paramilitary forces had been fighting Ukraine in the war in Donbas since 2014. Putin espoused irredentist and imperialist views challenging Ukraine's legitimacy as a state, baselessly claimed that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis committing genocide against the Russian minority in the Donbas, and said that Russia's goal was to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine. Russian air strikes and a ground invasion were launched on a northern front from Belarus towards the capital Kyiv, a southern front from occupied Crimea, and an eastern front from the Donbas towards Kharkiv. Ukraine enacted martial law, ordered a general mobilisation, and severed diplomatic relations with Russia.

Immigration to Germany, including both the territory of modern Germany and its numerous predecessor states, has been a significant part of the country’s history. Historically, migration was mainly from other European countries, such as Poland, Italy, and Austria, while contemporary immigration is predominantly from non-European countries, including Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and nations in Africa and Asia. Since 2012, more than one million people have relocated to Germany annually, with the number exceeding two million in both 2015 and 2022, making it the world’s second most popular destination for immigrants after the United States. As of 2024, around 17.4 million people living in Germany, or 20.9% of the population, are first-generation immigrants, while the population with a migrant background in the wider sense stood at approximately 25.2 million, accounting for 30.2% of the total population of 83.5 million.

Even before Germany's formal founding in 1871, its predecessor states, such as the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation, were common destinations for the persecuted or migrant workers. Early examples include Protestants seeking religious freedom and refugees from the partitions of Poland. Jewish migrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, was also significant in successive waves. In the 20th century, rising antisemitism and xenophobia resulted in the mass emigration of German Jews and culminated in the Holocaust, in which almost all remaining German Jews and many other religious or ethnic groups, such as German Roma, were systematically murdered. In the decades since, Germany has experienced renewed immigration, particularly from Eastern and Southern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East. Since 1990, Germany has consistently ranked as one of the five most popular destination countries for immigrants in the world. According to the federal statistics office in 2016, over one in five Germans has at least partial roots outside of the country.