Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Saturday that her country was working with international partners to establish an airlift for Ukrainian refugees in Moldova.

After a meeting with her Moldovan counterpart Nicu Popescu in Chisinau, Baerbock said that the German government would bring 2,500 Ukrainian refugees from Moldova directly to Germany as a first step.

A "green corridor" with buses traveling via Romania was among the initiatives, she said, as well as flights directly from Chisinau or via neighboring countries.

The European Union has provided emergency aid of 5 million euros ($5.5 million) for Moldova, and the German government has provided an additional 3 million euros, Baerbock said.

According to Popescu, Moldova had taken in a total of about 300,000 people from Ukraine, of whom more than 100,000 were still in the country. Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe.

The total number of people who have fled Ukraine since the multi-pronged attack began on Feb. 24 has exceeded 2.5 million, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in an update on Friday.

Some 1.6 million of the refugees had arrived in Poland, the Polish border authorities said on Saturday.