A total of 4.37 million non-EU citizens who fled Ukraine were under temporary protection status by the end of August, with Cyprus recording the third-highest ratio of Ukrainians within the EU — 25 per 1,000 people.
The island is currently home to a total of 24,475 Ukrainians.
However, Cyprus is not among the EU countries hosting the largest absolute number of beneficiaries from Ukraine. These include Germany, which accounts for 27.7 per cent of the EU total with 1,210,515 people; Poland, at 22.8 per cent with 995,925 people; and Czechia, at 8.8 per cent with 385,655 Ukrainians.
When measured by the ratio of Ukrainian beneficiaries per 1,000 inhabitants, Cyprus ranks third after Czechia (35.4) and Poland (27.3). The EU average stands at 9.7.
By the end of August, Ukrainian citizens made up more than 98.4 per cent of beneficiaries of temporary protection in the EU.
Cyprus has been a common destination for Ukrainians ever since the outbreak of the war in February 2022.
At the end of 2023, Cyprus, with more than 20,000 arrivals, had one of the largest proportion of refugees from Ukraine who were granted temporary protection status since February 2022.
In 2022 and 2023, the government spent a total of €44.4 million on hosting Ukrainian refugees. According to the deputy ministry of tourism, a total of €10.1 million was spent on accommodating Ukrainians in 2022, followed by another €29.3 million in 2023.
The social welfare department in 2024 said that it had paid out €2.1 million in guaranteed minimum income payments to Ukrainian refugees in 2022 and another €1.8 million in 2023.
