A big amount of Ukrainian citizens flee from the conflicts in the south east of the country looking for asylum and protection.
Ukrainian women an her little girls waiting to cross Russia
It’s been reported that about a million people coming from South east Ukraine have moved to Russia due to the armed conflicts in the region, 600 000 of them claim they’ll never return home and other 114 000 are being part of the government program of resettlement and received material aid and a short track in getting Russian citizenship. This, according to declarations of Konstantin Romodanovsky, head of the Federal Migration Service.
Earlier this year, UNHCR (United Nations High Comissioner for Refugees) informed that from 2014 to mid-June this year, Russia was the country in the world with the biggest amount of asylum requests, mainly due to war in Donbass region.
Russia and Belarus have been able to fulfill almost 90% of those requests this last year, a lot more than other western countries like Finland, Poland, the UK or France. Canada, Germany and the US have processed about 35 – 65% of the asylum petitions coming from Ukrainian citizens.
Russian policies to help Ukrainians fleeing from their homeland include measures to enhance legal job and status in addition to the improvement of Russians’ attitudes towards migrants in general.
Written by Lisbeth Mechter