The Russian authorities have estimated this Monday at about 475,000 the number of people, including around 100,000 children, who have arrived in the country fleeing the war in Ukraine, most of them from the Donbas region (east), where are the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Official sources quoted by the Russian news agency TASS have detailed that “more than 472,000 people have arrived in Russia from the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as from Ukraine”, before adding that there are 144,000 Russians among them.
These sources have stated that among the refugees arriving in the country there are also 269,000 people “with citizenship of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics”, whose independence was recognized by Moscow days before the start of the invasion, and “almost 60,000” people with Ukrainian nationality. and from third countries.
In this sense, they have also stressed that nearly 400,000 people have entered the country from the borders with the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, while the rest did so through checkpoints in the Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions, in addition through Crimea, a peninsula annexed in 2014 by Russia, in a decision not recognized by the international community.
Finally, these sources have indicated that the authorities have opened 300 temporary centers in 34 regions to welcome the refugees and have said that there are 24,000 people in them, including some 10,000 children, as reported by the TASS agency.
More than 3.8 million people have left Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24 the start of a military offensive, according to United Nations data, which considers this exodus the fastest since World War II. World War.