Amid the two-month occupation by separatist forces in the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk and subsequent military campaign by the central government, thousands have fled for other parts of Ukraine. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 10,000 civilians have been internally displaced after the occupation of Crimea by Russian forces and subsequent fighting in eastern Ukraine.

At least one-third of them are children, and some of them have been displaced twice after fleeing Crimea for the east, according to the UNHCR. Forty-five percent of them have settled in the center of the country, while 26 percent went to western Ukraine. As Maxim Eristavi writes in “The New Republic,”the problem is invisible since internally displaced people blend in easily in Kyiv. RFE/RL’s Russian Service conducted an interview on June 6 with blogger and publicist Sergei Ivanov, who fled his native Luhansk and is now residing in Kyiv.

Sergei Ivanov:  There is de jure authority. There is Goveror [Irina] Veryhina, the heads of security and all of the other bodies that regulate and guarantee the daily life of the region. However, their work is paralyzed by the de facto oblast under the control of the “People’s Republic of Luhansk,” which is recognized as a terrorist organization by the Prosecutor-General’s Office. Therefore it is difficult to say that in Luhansk there is now Ukrainian rule. Luhansk Oblast is under the control of and is being internally occupied by terrorists, most of whom are Russian citizens, members of nongovernmental organizations of the Caucasian republics working for the Kremlin, and a motley of mercenaries. There are many criminal elements, especially the group named “the defenders of Donbas” who came from prisons. They took power simultaneously.