The German Federal Statistical Office has reported that the influx of Ukrainian refugees to Germany has pushed the country's population to a new all-time high of over 84 million people.

Around 750,000 Ukrainian refugees, most of them women, came to Germany due to the Russian invasion in the first half of 2022.

Official data show that “by the end of June, the country's population increased by 843,000 people” or 1%, while in the entire year of 2021 it grew by 82,000 people, or 0.1%.

The Statistical Office emphasised that such an extensive population growth has not been recorded since 1992, when borders had opened in eastern Europe because of the war in former Yugoslavia, and since 2015, when migrants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan fled to Germany.

In 1992, about 700,000 people arrived in the country, and in 2015 there were one million.

Connecting Ukrainian refugees with potential hosts

Since the beginning of the invasion, evangelicals all around Europe are helping Ukrainians, by both sending aid to those who remain in the country, and by welcoming into their homes and churches millions of refugees who have fled looking for a better life.

In Germany, two young developers who already had experience in the field of social media, created the Host4Ukraine website and app, where individuals can easily offer their home in a website that looks like a AirBnB website but for free.

“We come from a Christian background. Loving your neighbour was important for us”, they told Pro Medien Magazin. Just three weeks after the start of the invasion, over 10,000 beds were alrady offered on this platform, in Germany and other 40 countries.

EAD asks Germans to “welcome refugees” and pray for them

Right after the conflict began, the German Evangelical Alliance (EAD) released a statement, urging Germans to “welcome refugees, stand by them and help practically wherever we can”.

They also encouraged “politicians in Germany and Europe to take all necessary measures to stop Russia's power and lead to peace, and to keep a sense of proportion so that it is not above all the poor sections of Russia's population who suffer most from the sanctions”.

The EAD asked Christians to “organise prayer events in addition to personal prayer; communal prayer in particular has a special promise. With digital prayer events, national borders can be overcome”.

“Let us build bridges between Ukrainians and Russians wherever possible. Let us pray that the peace of God, which is higher than all understanding, will keep the hearts and minds of more and more people on all sides of the conflict (Philippians 4:7)”.

“Especially now, war is the time of peacemakers. Pursuing peace in a world that is often so devoid of peace, both in personal life and in political contexts, is part of the core calling of the followers of the peacemaker Jesus Christ”, concluded the statement.

Th EAD has also set up a website, where they “have compiled many good offers of help. Some works help on site, others support the refugees who have already arrived in Germany”