On September 23 the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) signed an agreement on establishing regional UNHCR branches in Ukraine.
The first regional UNHCR office is about to open and invite its first guests in the town of Obodivka, Vinnytsia oblast, where it can accommodate up to 300. The refugees are to be employed by local agricultural firms. In the nearest future the UNHCR is planning to open its regional offices in Simferopol, Sevastopol, and Transcarpathia.
According to Mykola Rudko, Chairman of the State Committee on National Minority Affairs and Migration, state statistical data show that 2000 refugees from Afghanistan and other countries currently live in Ukraine.
In accordance with the law, people, who before coming to Ukraine lived in other countries and could have been granted refugee status there, cannot be granted refugee status in Ukraine, reports Inna Zolotukhina, The Day.
Membership in Ukraine’s largest in regional Hromada Party organization in Dnipropetrovsk has dropped by 53,000. Tetiana Poleiko, leader of the regional Hromada branch, stated at a party conference in Dnipropetrovsk, half a year ago the number of party members was 170,000 but has now fallen to 117,000.
According to tentative data, in Dnipropetrovsk itself the number has more than halved: 19,000 now instead vs. 42,000 before. The number of young Hromada members has also dropped to 2,000. Such data are a result of a the reregistration of party members. The decision to conduct such an action was taken at the last Hromada congress in July, Vadym Ryzhkov of The Day reports.






