SIMFEROPOL, March 7. /TASS/: Crimea received more than 7,700 immigrants from Ukraine in 2019, a nearly 17-percent increase compared to the previous year, the Crimean Department of the Russian Federal Statistics Service informed TASS.
According to the federal service, 6,622 citizens of the neighboring country moved to the peninsula in 2018, while in 2019 this number amounted to 7,734. Ukrainians account for almost 80% of the total number of citizens of the CIS countries who moved to Crimea. "The number of people who arrived from the CIS countries stands at 9,674," it said.
On the other hand, the number of Ukrainians who have left Crimea has dropped. According to preliminary data, there were 4,600 of them in 2018, while last year that number stood at 3,922.
Speaker of Crimea’s State Council Vladimir Konstantinov said at a meeting with a delegation of foreign media representatives in November 2019 that Crimea had received about 170,000 people, including 50,000 Ukrainians, since its reunification with Russia.
The Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, a city with a special status on the Crimean Peninsula, where most residents are ethnic Russians, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the authorities in Kiev who seized power amid riots that sparked a coup in Ukraine in February 2014.
Crimea and Sevastopol adopted declarations of independence on March 11, 2014. They held a referendum on March 16, 2014, in which 96.77% of Crimeans and 95.6% of Sevastopol voters chose to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. The Russian president signed the reunification deals on March 18, 2014. Despite the convincing results of the referendum, Kiev refused to recognize Crimea as part of Russia.
