Planning for the long haul: four months on, the Ukrainian refugee crisis is only just beginning

People queuing for a place on buses at the Medyka border crossing between Ukraine and Poland in March. Photograph: Wojtek Radwański/AFP/Getty Images

Nearly four months after the Russian invasion began, more than 7.5 million Ukrainians have fled their country and millions more have been displaced within it.

The UN’s original estimate that 4 million Ukrainians would become refugees as a result of the invasion has been dwarfed, and warnings from the UN that we were about to witness the largest refugee crisis in a century have been borne out.