MOSCOW. Oct 17 (Interfax-AVN) - Up to five million refugees could enter the CIS due to the military action in Afghanistan, Andrei Nikolayev, chairman of the Duma defense committee, has said. This "humanitarian catastrophe could become the main problem" for Russia, he said.
"Experts estimate the expected influx of ethnic refugees into Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan at 3-5 million people," Nikolayev said in an interview published in the Wednesday edition of the newspaper Moskovski Komsomolets.
The refugees "will not be able to survive or find food in these republics, which are not very rich," and considering the transparency of Russia's borders in that area, many of them will soon be in the central part of Russia, Moscow and other large cities, he said.