ROSTOV-ON-DON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th November, 2019) ON-DON, Russia, November 13 (Sputnik) - More than 170,000 residents of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions, known together as Donbas, obtained Russian passports over the past six months in specialized centers set in Russia's Rostov region, Rostov Governor Vasily Golubev said on Wednesday.
In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree facilitating the naturalization of Donbas residents in Russia. He explained that the move is in no way intended to trouble Kiev and has a purely humanitarian rationale behind it as the situation with human rights violations in Donbas is beyond acceptable limits. In less than a week, specialized centers opened in the Rostov region for people to obtain Russian passports.
"More than 170,000 people [from Donetsk and Luhansk] have obtained Russian citizenship as of today," Golubev said during the "Glavnoye o Glavnom" (eng. important about the important) program at a local television channel, Don 24.
Some of these people returned home, he added.
"It had no effect on the labor market. We have 51,000 vacancies in different job sectors today," Golubev said.
According to the governor, the situation is also being monitored through schooling institutions.
"In 2014 [when the military conflict in Donbas began], we got to have an additional 9,000 people in pre-schooling and schooling institutions ... then the load dropped. At the moment, we do not see the load be growing," he added.
In April 2014, the Ukrainian government launched an offensive against Donetsk and Luhansk after they proclaimed independence following what they considered to be a coup in Kiev two months earlier. According to UN estimates, more than 3,300 civilians have died and over 7,000 been injured during the conflict since.
