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Some Ukrainians are registered as internally displaced solely for social reasons, said Inna Golovanchuk, deputy minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine.
About half of the Ukrainians officially registered as internally displaced actually live in the occupied territory.
Inna Golovanchuk, Deputy Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, said this in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
“If in November the number of registered migrants is around 1.5 million, then of them the number of people who live in the temporarily occupied territory is approximately half. That is, they are people who remain formally in the territories. occupied and are registered as internally displaced exclusively for social considerations, “he said.
The vice minister clarified that they actually left for the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities and that between 700 and 800 thousand people live there.
According to Golovanchuk, some of the retirees do not have money to live in the occupation, and at the same time they do not have the opportunity to leave.
“And the state must take care of its citizens,” emphasized the deputy chief of the Ministry of Reintegration.
In September, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Oleksiy Reznikov, spoke about 500 thousand internally displaced persons living in ORDLO and receiving pensions from the Ukrainian government.
In 2014, immediately after the annexation of Crimea, Russia launched an armed aggression in eastern Ukraine. The fighting is between the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on the one hand, and the Russian army and the Russian-backed militants who control parts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, on the other. The Russian Federation does not officially recognize its invasion of Ukraine, despite the facts and evidence presented by Ukraine.
Ukraine suspended social payments to citizens living in the militant-controlled territory of Donbass in late 2014. To receive pensions, ORDLO residents must register as displaced persons and live in the territory controlled by Ukraine.
The international human rights organization Human Rights Watch said Ukraine must end the discriminatory practice that forces ORDLO pensioners to cross the contact line to receive pensions. Human rights activists asked the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to create the conditions to minimize such trips.
According to human rights activists, each month around 1 million people cross the checkpoints in Donbas. More than half of them travel to the territories controlled by the Ukrainian authorities to receive pensions.
A group of pensioners living in ORDLO filed a complaint for non-payment of pensions with the European Court of Human Rights, but the ECHR sided with the Ukrainian state.
