THE UN REFUGEE agency says one million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, in the swiftest exodus of refugees this century.

The tally from UNHCR amounts to more than 2% of Ukraine’s population on the move in under a week. The World Bank counted the population at 44 million at the end of 2020.

The announcement comes as Russian forces lay siege to two strategic Ukrainian ports and press their bombardment of the country’s second-biggest city, while the huge armoured column threatening Kyiv appeared to be stalled outside the capital.

Moscow’s isolation deepened, meanwhile, when most of the world lined up against it at the United Nations to demand it withdraw from Ukraine.

And the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine.

A second round of talks aimed at ending the fighting was expected today between Ukraine and Russia, but there appeared to be little common ground between the two sides.

UNHCR, meanwhile, predicted up to 4 million people could eventually leave Ukraine but cautioned even that projection could be revised upward.

In an email, UNHCR spokesperson Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams wrote: “Our data indicates we passed the 1M mark” as of midnight in central Europe (11pm London), based on counts collected by national authorities.

UNHCR spokesperson Shabia Mantoo said yesterday that “at this rate” the outflows from Ukraine could make it the source of “the biggest refugee crisis this century”.