BERLIN (Reuters) – Some 1.1 million people arrived in Germany from Ukraine in 2022, exceeding the influx of migrants from the Middle East around 2015, Germany’s federal statistical office said on Thursday.
Two thirds of the immigrants from Ukraine arrived in the first three months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, between March and May of last year, it said.
The data comes days before the one-year anniversary of the invasion on Feb. 24, which led to millions of Ukrainians being displaced.
Excluding those who returned to Ukraine, immigration from Ukraine to Germany to 962,000 in 2022, more than the total of 834,000 that came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq together between 2014 and 2016, it said.
That made Ukrainian citizens the second largest foreign population in Germany after Turkish nationals by October 2022, it said.
(Writing by Maria Sheahan, Editing by Rachel More)
