Medvedev: Russia is interested in inflow of highly-qualified workers from Ukraine

Russia’s migration policy is becoming a priority now that Europe is facing a migration crisis, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said while meeting with his Cabinet on Sept 24.

He said that last year Russia received a lot of refugees from the southeast of Ukraine. “The main thing in such situations is to avoid a chaos,” Medvedev said.

According to him, over 367,000 people have come to Russia under the voluntary repatriation program since 2007. Of them 106,000 came in 2014 and 115,000 in 2015.

“Most of those people are highly-qualified workers, who would like to find jobs in Russia. We are interested in an inflow of so many workers, especially into regions that are short of workforce. So, we must create stimuli for supporting such people,” Medvedev said.

According to him, the number of compatriots that have moved from Ukraine to Russia over the last two years has exceeded the planned figure. “We did not expect so many repatriates. So, some of our regions are certainly having problems with accommodating so many people,” Medvedev said.