According to the International Organization for Migration, the number of refugees coming to Europe this year has exceeded one million people. In this regard, the European Union is talking about a migration crisis that could almost lead to the destruction of Europe. Meanwhile, as the Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Rules and Organization of Parliamentary Activity Sergey Mamedov stated, to date, we have 1.1 million refugees from the southeast of Ukraine. In other words, there are more Ukrainian citizens from other regions within the Russian Federation.
Speaking about the work of his committee on public support for the inhabitants of southeastern Ukraine, Mamedov noted that this is a public association, which does not imply formal membership. The main area of work of the committee is work with refugees, and all of its stages are at the initial stage, when it is related to the definition of status, and all social guarantees in the future at the end. Also, the committee became a specific platform for statements by the representatives of the executive authorities of the DPR and LPR.
Another area of work is the collection and coordination of humanitarian assistance delivered to those territories. “If we take the total flow of humanitarian supplies, there are 48 convoys, that’s more than 50 million tons, according to EMERCOM’s official data. If we take the total number of all the convoys, not only of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, all our regions are somehow involved in this work, all of them sent something, and we are also coordinating this work, so that people have an understanding, what to carry, where, what is the need, where to and so forth, precisely so that this tonnage could be doubled. According to our estimates, during the conflict more than 100 thousand tons of humanitarian supplies have been delivered to these areas,” he said.
The committee on public support for the inhabitants of southeastern Ukraine also became a platform for the interaction of all the services of the executive authority involved in public support for the inhabitants of southeastern Ukraine. “Ombudsman for Human Rights Konstantin Dolgov is a permanent member of our committee, that the Russian Foreign Ministry. Representatives of the Investigative Committee are permanent invited guests to our committee, they receive data from the territories that are included in the project ‘White Book’, which is prepared by the Russian Foreign Ministry. Also, the data is transferred to the Investigation Committee, it is a registration of those violations, of those crimes, and this registration is factual, with specific living people, with testimonies, on the basis of which the Investigation Committee decides on the existence of a crime, initiation of criminal cases and so on,” Mamedov stated. His committee also works closely with the structures of the ‘Red Cross’.