Ukraine's government cuts payments to almost all categories of IDPs

He told this on Espreso TV.

"Today, we have 4.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), 3 million of whom received assistance from the state, and only 536,000 people are currently receiving targeted payments. The government has completely cut payments to almost all categories of IDPs. Only people with disabilities and pensioners whose total income does not exceed UAH 9,000 receive payments. This is a small amount that does not solve the problems of IDPs," said the head of the Association of Young IDPs of Ukraine.

According to him, today residents of Bakhmut, Mariupol, Avdiivka, whose homes have been destroyed, cannot legally prove this fact to receive compensation. 

"That is why the Association of Young IDPs of Ukraine developed draft law No. 11161, which was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada together with MPs from the European Solidarity political party. According to this draft law, we have created a mechanism for IDPs that will help residents of, for example, Mariupol or Bakhmut, that is, all people whose housing remained in the temporarily occupied territories, to receive a housing compensation mechanism.

The state left people without payments back in March, there is no chance of getting compensation for housing now. And we understand that the current war is not only about territory, but also about every person. We have almost 5 million IDPs, and we have to understand that most of these people are women with children who can leave both now and post-war Ukraine, which will be a major demographic crisis and tragedy for us," Arkadiy Petrosyan summed up.

• On May 21, the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine informed that people evacuating from the dangerous areas of Kharkiv region can renew their IDP status: after that, they will be entitled to IDP payments.