MOSCOW. Sept 3 (Interfax) - The internally displaced people in Ukraine are in a disastrous situation, said Vladimir Pligin, the head of the State Duma Committee for Constitutional Legislation and Nation-Building.
"The internal refugees in Ukraine are living in horrible conditions. There is practically no real help in their own country, but the international community pays no attention to this and, in my view, even human rights organizations have not been paying enough attention," Pligin told the committee on Tuesday during a debate of changes to the law "On refugees" which were proposed by a group of Duma deputies from various factions.
Russia is cooperating "with a number of UN offices on this issue" because this category of citizens needs support, he said.
This issue must surely become a subject of discussion at a meeting of the Duma speaker's working group which monitors Ukrainian legislation, Pligin said.
Intervention in Ukraine's domestic affairs is out of question, "this is just the humanitarian aspect of the problem of the internal refugees," he said.
As for the refugees who have fled Ukraine and are now in Russia, the figure cited during the bill debate was one million people, an Interfax correspondent said.
A particular burden lay on the Russian regions bordering Ukraine, where refugees had arrived in the first place; the federal funding for helping them settle in has yet to be received, so all help has been provided at the expense of local resources and local business.
Furthermore, the population of these regions had been accommodating the Ukrainian refugees in their homes free of charge, the committee chairman added.