OVER 110,000 Ukrainians have fled for Russia this year and another 54,000 have left home but stayed in Ukraine, the UN refugee agency revealed today.
Only 9,500 of those Russia-bound have sought refugee status but many are too afraid of future reprisals if they return to Ukraine to make a formal request, said agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.
Another 750 Ukrainians have requested refugee status in Poland, Belarus, the Czech Republic and Romania.
The number of those internally displaced in Ukraine represents a huge increase in the past week. About 12,000 of them are from Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March and the rest are from eastern Ukraine.
The single largest concentration of refugees inside Ukraine is in Svyatogorsk in the Donetsk region, which has declared independence from the government in Kiev.
“The rise in numbers of the past week coincides with a recent deterioration of the situation in eastern Ukraine,” said Ms Fleming.
“Displaced people cite worsening law and order, fear of abductions, human rights violations and the disruption of state services.”
Many of the latest Ukrainian arrivals in Russia are clustered in the Rostov-on-Don region, where 12,900 refugees including 5,000 children have fled, and in Byransk, which has 6,500 refugees.
EU leaders in Brussels said yesterday that they had prepared fresh sanctions against Russia but would not impose them before Monday, allowing Moscow and rebels in eastern Ukraine to engage with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s “peace plan.”
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