03:03, 8 March 2014

FMS denies reports about 143,000 Ukrainian refugees in Russian regions

Anatoly Fomenko, Deputy Head of the Russian Federal Migration Service (FMS), has refuted the widespread reports about 143,000 refugees from Ukraine, who have arrived in Russia, including Southern Russia, in recent weeks.

Let us remind you that on March 2, Russian media reported citing Russia's Frontier Service that over the past two months 675,000 citizens of Ukraine came to Russia; and about 143,000 of them had applied for asylum within the last two weeks. Experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" back on March 4 expressed doubts about the above official figures.

On March 7, at a sitting of the temporary commission of the Federation Council for monitoring the situation in Ukraine, Anatoly Fomenko explained that since the beginning of the year over 1500 persons from Ukraine applied for Russian citizenship; however, "no mass inflow of Ukrainian citizens into the territory of Russia in the context of the situation in Ukraine" was not observed, the ITAR-TASS reported. In his comment on the alleged 143,000, he suggested that "it referred to those who had entered the territory of the Russian Federation on common grounds."