Central European countries braced on Thursday to receive people fleeing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with Poland setting up reception points on its border and Hungary planning to send troops to create a corridor for refugees.
The countries on the European Union's eastern flank were all once part of the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact and are now members of NATO. Among them, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania all share land borders with Ukraine.
"In the next few hours, reception points for refugees from Ukraine will be created," the PAP news agency quoted Polish Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Pawel Szefernaker as saying. Hungary also said its embassy in Kyiv remained open but the Czech Republic closed its diplomatic mission, though its consulate in the west Ukrainian city of Lviv remained open.The Slovak railway halted services to Ukraine, and budget airline Wizz temporarily suspended all flights in and out of Ukraine.
Budapest must also prepare for the possibility that soldiers engaged in combat could "drift over" the border, as happened during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, he added, without elaborating. "Slovakia is ready to help, we could allow in people who don't have all the necessary documents on them."
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