Moscow welcomes UN Refugee Agency's intention to work more actively in Donbas
MOSCOW. March 27 (Interfax) - The Russian Foreign Ministry supports the plans of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to open an office in Luhansk.
"We deem the UNHCR's intention to intensify its activities in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions to be right. Taking into consideration constructive cooperation with the LPR (the self-proclaimed Luhansk people's republic] authorities mentioned by the UN, we support the plans to open an UNHCR office in Luhansk in the near future, which should promote the resolution of pressing humanitarian problems of the region's residents," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in commenting on the publication of a new UNHCR report on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.
Moscow has noticed that, according to the UNHCR estimates, the number of internally displaced persons in Ukraine has reached 1.152 million, most of whom belong to vulnerable groups and need special care, Lukashevich said in a statement available on the Foreign Ministry website.
"Among the internally displaced persons are 147,000 children, 48,000 disabled people, and 694,000 pensioners who, as far as we understand, have had to leave their permanent residences to receive their pensions because of the ban imposed by the Kyiv authorities on social payments in Donetsk and Luhansk," Lukashevich said.
"We share the UNHCR's concerns about numerous problems involved in the registration of internally displaced persons by Ukrainian authorities and restrictions that Kyiv has imposed on the entrance to and exit from southeastern Ukraine, which violates freedom of movement and obstructs humanitarian access. The UN agency complains about delays of humanitarian cargo at government-controlled checkpoints, where convoys are stopped or denied passage to territories controlled by the militia. The UNHCR is also alarmed by a significant number of unexploded mines and ammunition rounds in the region," it says.
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