Ontario, Apr 15 (AP) Canada is sending soldiers to Poland to help with the care, co-ordination and resettlement of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, including some who will come to Canada.

Defense Minister Anita Anand announced the deployment of up to 150 troops Thursday.

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More than 2.6 million Ukrainians have fled into Poland since the first Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on February 24 and over 2 million more have fled into other surrounding countries.

Anand said the majority of the deployed troops will head to reception centers across Poland to help care for and register Ukrainian refugees.

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Another group is being sent to help co-ordinate international aid efforts.

Canada has deployed hundreds of additional troops to eastern Europe since Russia's invasion as the NATO military alliance seeks to both support Ukraine and prevent the conflict from expanding into a broader war.

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

KYIV, Ukraine — The head of the U.N. World Food Program said people are being “starved to death” in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol and he predicted the country's humanitarian crisis is likely to worsen as Russia intensifies its assault in the coming weeks.

WFP executive director David Beasley also warned in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press in Kyiv that Russia's invasion of grain-exporting Ukraine risks destabilizing nations far from its shores and could trigger waves of migrants seeking better lives elsewhere.

The war that began Feb. 24 was “devastating the people in Ukraine,” Beasley said, lamenting the lack of access faced by the WFP and other aid organizations in trying to reach those in need amid the conflict.

The fluid nature of the conflict, which has seen fighting shift away from areas around the capital and toward eastern Ukraine, has made it especially difficult to reach hungry Ukrainians.

The WFP is trying to put food supplies now in areas that could be caught up in the fighting, but Beasley acknowledged that there are “a lot of complexities” as the situation rapidly evolves.

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UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Russia of making the precarious food situation in Yemen and elsewhere worse by invading Ukraine, calling it “just another grim example of the ripple effect Russia's unprovoked, unjust, unconscionable war is having on the world's most vulnerable.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a U.N. Security Council meeting on war-torn Yemen on Thursday that the World Food Program identified the Arab world's poorest nation as one of the countries most affected by wheat price increases and lack of imports from Ukraine.

Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky shot back saying: “The main factor for instability and the source of the problem today is not the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, but sanctions measures imposed on our country seeking to cut off any supplies from Russia and the supply chain, apart from those supplies that those countries in the West need, in other words energy.”

The sharp exchange took place a day after a U.N. task force warned that the war threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries that are now facing even higher food and energy costs and increasingly difficult financial conditions.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched their report saying: “As many as 1.7 billion people -- one-third of whom are already living in poverty -- are now highly exposed to disruptions in food, energy and finance systems that are triggering increases in poverty and hunger.”

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MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Western countries' attempts to phase out Russian gas imports will have a negative impact on their economies.

Speaking Thursday, Putin said European attempts to find alternatives to Russian gas shipments will be “quite painful for the initiators of such policies.”

He argued that “there is simply no reasonable replacement for it in Europe now.”

Putin noted that “supplies from other countries that could be sent to Europe, primarily from the United States, would cost consumers many times more.” He added it would “affect people's standard of living and the competitiveness of the European economy.”

The European Union is dependent on Russia for 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its oil. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)