could assist here. shelly, you mentioned the refugee crisis of 2015. people left places like syria, iraq, flooding western europe. part of the result of that was this anti-immigrant rhetoric which led to the rise of far-right political movements. if we see another potentially even bigger refugee crisis in the coming months, how do you see it playing out against that backdrop? i think that there are some risks. first of all, right now, sentiment seems to be pretty positive. there s a lot of sympathy for ukrainians who might burst out of their countries if there is a russian invasion. but the risks are if that host communities in europe become overwhelmed with an influx of people that are hard to house, et cetera, or if there are impressions of chaos, that could sow divisions within the e.u. along the lines of what we saw in 2015 during that migrant crisis. so in the 2015 migrant crisis, those large numbers of people
millions could potentially flee, triggering a massive humanitarian crisis. i m going to bring in nbc s cal perry in poland, one of ukraine s neighbors, bracing for a possible wave of refugees. also with me shelly culbertson, a senior policy researcher with the rand corporation. this is a country of 44 million people. if the russian military goes in, are there good estimates on how many people we think might actually try to flee the country? how bad could it get? well, if russia invades, there could be between 1 million and 5 million refugees. that could unfold in a couple different ways. if it s a full-country invasion, there could be a sudden mass exodus of people flowing into neighboring countries, in particular poland. or if it s a lower-grade, longer-term insurgency or limited in geography, there could be a slower movement of people over the coming months or