Refugees fleeing east Ukraine were not on the agenda as Petro Poroshenko, the new Ukrainian president, signed his association agreement with the EU.
Lindsey German
One refugee problem we don’t hear much about in the western press is that in the Ukraine. Yet according to the UNHCR, the official United nations refugee body, over 100,000 have crossed the border into Russia.
The number has sharply increased in recent weeks. Added to this is the internal displacement of people in Eastern Ukraine, which is estiamed at over 54,000, and there is a substantial problem. Last week alone 16,400 people fled their homes in eastern Ukraine.
This wasn’t high on the agenda when Petro Poroshenko, the new Ukrainian president, signed his association agreement with the EU last Friday.
In fact it wasn’t on the agenda at all.
To draw attention to it would be of course to admit that the Ukraine is in a state of war, and that the government is attacking the eastern towns which have decalred independence.
In mid June, a UN representative said that 356 people had been killed since mid April, of whom 257 were civilians.
In an age where we talk of war casualties in hundreds of thousands, and refugee numbers in millions, these numbers may not seem so drastic. But surely we should know of them, and our media should report them. They are after all happening in a Europe which is forcing austerity on its people yet finds money for wars across the globe.
Source: Stop the War Coalition
