The Russian Ministry of Economic Development supports the initiative of some members of the Lower House (Duma) who proposed to increase the population beyond the Urals region by using Ukrainian refugees, Izvestia reported on Tuesday.
The ministry noted that more than 50,000 jobs would be created in Russia’s Far East by 2020, which could be given to Ukrainians. According to Izvestia, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development has already informed the Federal Migration Service about its intent to push the idea.
“The list of priority settlement areas includes the Republic of Buryatia, Trans-Baikal territory, Kamchatka territory, Primorye Maritime territory, Khabarovsk territory, the Amur region, the Irkutsk region, the Magadan region, the Sakhalin region and the Jewish Autonomous Region,” the ministry told Izvestia.
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast is a district in the Russian Far East, bordering Khabarovsk Krai and Amur Oblast in Russia and Heilongjiang province in China. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 176,558, with Jews making up less than 0.2%. It is the world’s only Jewish territory with an official status outside Israel. The Soviet authorities under Stalin established the autonomous oblast in 1934, where the Jews of the Soviet Union would pursue their Yiddish cultural heritage, when they weren’t fetching firewood or hunting ducks to make warmer coats. According to the 1939 population census, 17,695 Jews lived in the district. The Jewish population peaked in 1948 at around 30,000. Then Stalin died in 1953 and they hopped the first train back to the west.
According to the Federal Migration Service, about 70,000 people have moved voluntarily to Siberia and the Far East over the past two years, more than 29,000 of them from Ukraine. All in all, more than 150,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Russia since 2014.
The initiative to develop a federal program for the resettlement of people who had to leave Ukraine to Siberia and the Far East has been put forward by a group of lawmakers from the Russian Communist Party led by Sergey Obukhov.