In the period from mid-October 2023 to mid-October 2024, a significant number of Ukrainian citizens entered Russia through Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. According to the Russian authorities, tens of thousands of Ukrainians went through the filtering regime this year.
Moscow said that 107,000 Ukrainian citizens tried to enter Russia through the Sheremetyevo airport during the year, this is the only checkpoint through which Ukrainians can enter the Russian Federation.
About 83,000 of them were admitted, that is, approximately one in five was not admitted.
"More than 107,000 citizens of Ukraine arrived. More than 83,000 people of the specified category were allowed into the territory of the Russian Federation," Oksana Mishchenko, a representative of the border detachment at the Sheremetyevo airport, told the Russian state channel.
It should be noted that according to the reviews on social networks and those who passed the filtering, the percentage of denied entry is much higher than the indicated figures. Although, of course, it is difficult to get an accurate idea of the proportion of those who passed the filter from the comments on social networks.
However, the reliability of the number named by the Russians cannot be verified either. The percentage of those who were refused could have been deliberately underestimated against the background of criticism of the strict filtering in Sheremetyevo, which is sometimes echoed in Russia itself.
We will remind you that earlier a number of Ukrainian people's deputies and officials announced the mass return of refugees to regions controlled by the Russian Federation. The other day, Deputy Tkachenko even gave a figure of 150,000 people, although both he and Bankov later refuted it.
But if the number of more than 100,000 people who tried to enter in one year, from October 2023, named by the Russians is correct, then in reality the number of those who returned from 2022 could really be 150,000 or even more. Because until October 2023, filtering was not so strict and Ukrainians could enter the Russian Federation through all checkpoints. And therefore, the flow could be much larger.
Another question is how many of them actually stayed to live in these territories or in Russia - and who, having resolved their issues, for example, by obtaining Russian citizenship and selling an apartment, left for the European Union or returned to Ukraine. There are no reliable statistics here.
