Germans offer up 300,000 private homes for refugees from Ukraine

Berlin (Reuters) – Germans have offered up 300,000 private homes to house refugees from Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the country, Germany’s interior ministry said on Thursday.

The ministry is cooperating with the non-profit gut.org AG and home rental company Airbnb Inc’s (ABNB.O) non-profit arm Airbnb.org to assign refugees to housing offers, it said on Thursday.

More than 2.3 million people have fled from Ukraine since the invasion, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Most are women and children, as able-bodied men have been ordered by the Kyiv government to stay home to fight.

As of Wednesday, just over 80,000 Ukrainian refugees had been registered in Germany, with more arriving every day.

Many of them arrive in Berlin by train or bus, which has prompted the German capital to set up temporary accommodation at its shuttered Tegel airport to house up to 3,000 people.

From there, refugees would be distributed to longer-term homes, in Berlin or elsewhere in Germany.