Two years have passed since the first internally displaced people (IDPs) appeared in Ukraine. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, some residents of the peninsula fled to mainland Ukraine. These people feared repression from the new authorities, or simply did not want to remain among their fellow citizens who supported the “Russian spring”.
A much greater influx of refugees began later that summer, when the military conflict began in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine. Thousands of people had already left Crimea, but now hundreds of thousands of people needed help. Government figures from spring 2016 refer to nearly 1.8 million refugees, including roughly 20,000 people from Crimea.
Ukraine’s refugees have become something of an underclass. Deprived of their rights, they face bias and discrimination
