The United Nations says it is expecting an additional three million refugees to pour out of Ukraine in 2022, as they attempt to flee the ongoing Russian invasion.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has updated its projections and now estimates that a total of 8.3 million people will flee Ukraine this year, a UNHCR spokesperson in Geneva said on Tuesday.

According to the spokesperson, nearly 5.3 million refugees presently have left Ukraine for one of its neighbouring countries.

UNHCR described the speed with which the Ukraine refugee crisis was unfolding as unprecedented in recent times.

Globally, only Syria has been the source of more refugees than Ukraine, the spokesperson said, stressing that that was during the course of a far longer period of time.

The UNHCR said that it required an additional 1.85 billion dollars in funding by the end of the year to support Ukrainian refugees in Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Belarus.

Within Ukraine, 7.7 million people are believed to have been displaced by the fighting, according to UN estimates.

Another 13 million people are believed to be stranded in various regions and unable to escape due to the security situation, the UNHCR spokesperson added.

Before the Russian invasion, Ukraine had a population of about 44 million.

(dpa/NAN)