Ukraine says that it takes care of Ukrainians, including Donbass citizens, however, refugees were lent a helping hand from Russia

15th Feb./Donetsk/ Novorossia Today. Within 18 months Russia has hosted more than one million refugees from Donbass, Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

He said the migration topic, which is related closely to terrorism and regional conflicts, had affected not only Western Europe, but also Russia.

“While from Syria it (the migration inflow) is not that big, the inflow from Ukraine for us became a big topic. Within 18 months only we hosted more than one million refugees,” he said.

Be reminded that Ukraine started military operation called ¨ATO¨ against civilians in Donbass in May 2014. Primarily Ukrainian fighters targeted the Donetsk airport, then populated areas of Donbass were shelled by heavy artillery. Many civilians of Donbass started evacuating, people wanted protecting their children and moved to Russia.

According to UNO report published in September 2015, 8000 civilians died in Donbass. It was reasonable to move for many people. Especially from the cities that were subjected to longstanding shelling as Uglegorsk, Snezhnoe, Shahtyorsk, Debaltsevo.

Ukraine made loud statements that it is ready to receive all refugees, however, in practice, it turned out not this. People who believed that Ukraine would receive them were disappointed as a sequence. They faced awful attitude, they were treated like enemies.

This fact was confirmed even by International organization as OSCE. It is said in the research made by OSCE mission that there are different types of barriers in the center of attention in talk shows on the central Ukrainian TV channels. For instance, there are trans-regional, inter-ethnic barriers, and there are no ways for their solution.
‘Ukrainian channels make heroes from ATO fighters, and they make devils of the DPR, LPR and Russia soldiers. They conceal problems of refugees and they hardly mention volunteers. We hear often words of hatred in talk shows’.

Nataliya Sinyavskaya