Displaced population
By early August 2014, at least 730,000 had fled fighting in the Donbas and left for Russia.[611]
This number, much larger than earlier estimates, was given by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The number of internal refugees rose to 117,000.[611] By the start of September, after a sharp escalation over the course of August, the number of people displaced from Donbas within Ukraine more than doubled to 260,000.[612] The number of temporary asylum seekers and refugee applicants from Ukraine in Russia rose to 121,000.[613] Despite two months of a shaky ceasefire established by the Minsk Protocol, the number of refugees displaced from Donbas in Ukraine escalated sharply to 466,829 in mid November.[614]
By April 2015, the war had caused at least 1.3 million people to become internally displaced within Ukraine.[615] In addition, more than 800,000 Ukrainians had sought asylum, residence permits, or other forms of legal stay in neighbouring countries, with over 659,143 in Russia, 81,100 in Belarus, and thousands more elsewhere.[616][617]
According to another report by the UN OHCHR, over 3 million people continued to live in the Donbas conflict zone as of March 2016.[618] This was said to include 2.7 million who lived in DPR and LPR-controlled areas, and 200,000 in Ukrainian-controlled areas adjacent to the line of contact. In addition, the Ukrainian government was said to have registered a total of 1.6 million internally displaced people within Ukraine who had fled the conflict. Over 1 million were reported to have sought asylum elsewhere,
with most having gone to Russia.[618]