While the West thinks Russia is fighting a war with Ukraine, and Moscow calls the conflict a ‘civil war’, civilians continue to flee the combat zone in eastern Ukraine.
Last summer, many people made their way to the border crossing at Rostov, and from there—across Russia.
Ukrainians have been coming to work in Russia for a long time. If you take into account labour migrants from Ukraine (of which there are 3.6m), there are almost five million Ukrainians living in Russia. And for many Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens, Moscow was the only place they could move after the outbreak of war in the east.
