STRASBOURG, September 30 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova - The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is not planning to launch its own fact-finding into the information on Ukrainian refugees, despite conflicting reports about the number of people who fled the violence amid the crisis, UNHCR's representative to the Council of Europe Gert Westerveen told RIA Novosti Tuesday.
"Not necessarily in this particular situation because we are dealing with actually very sophisticated governments, their institutions, their capacities," Westerveen said answering a question if the UNHCR can start its own counting given the different information provided.
"It is mainly the situations where governments are weaker, that we come in ourselves and do our own counting," he noted.
During the Tuesday hearing on the situation of refugees and internally displaced persons in Ukraine held on the sidelines of the PACE fall session, Marina Leksina, a member of Moscow-based Civic Assistance Committee, presented a different view on the refugee situation in Ukraine.
"There are no more than approximately 150,000 – 170,000 Ukrainian refugees in the Russian Federation, which is significantly lower than what has been officially reported by Federal Migration Service and rotated in the media, which is around 800,000 people or even a million," Leksina said.
"They [Russia and Ukraine] should be able at some point in time to come up with a proper picture of the situation. We will be waiting for this moment," Gert Westerveen stressed.
Russia has been reporting a massive flow of Ukrainian refugees traveling to its western Rostov Region since June. More than 800,000 Ukrainian residents have entered Russian territory since April 1, according to the Russian Federal Migration Service. A large number of Ukrainians are arriving in Russia under the visa-free regime.
