Ninety percent of the Ukrainians that have fled to Russia are staying with their friends and relatives, Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) Chief Konstantin Romodanovsky said Monday.
“Local authorities are helping about ten percent of Ukrainian refugees, the others are staying with their friends and relatives,” Romodanovsky said at a meeting with representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“Mainly, people come from [Ukraine’s] Luhansk and Donetsk. Approximately 490,000 refugees are currently in Russia,” the Migration Service chief noted, adding that most of them are in Russia’s Belgorod and Rostov regions.
Rostov Region alone is hosting more than 30,000 people, and just under 1,700 people, including 520 children, have arrived in temporary accommodation centers in the past 24 hours, according to Russian Children’s Rights Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov.
Earlier on Monday, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said the number of refugees from southeastern Ukraine in Russian temporary accommodation centers (TACs) had increased by over 1,800 in the past 24 hours.
According to UNHCR estimates, more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees from the east of the country have been stranded in Russia, with a further 50,000 Ukrainians internally displaced.
The flow of refugees from southeastern Ukraine to Russia increased dramatically late June due to the ongoing standoff between independence supporters and government troops. The authorities of the six Russian regions neighboring Ukraine recently declared a state of emergency.
