Newsflash: First Time Asylum Applicants in the EU-28 by Citizenship, Q2 2014 – Q2 2015

From official Eurostat pages I found a fresh file – First time asylum applicants in the EU-28 by citizenship, Q2 2014 – Q2 2015 – which might surprise many who think that the question is only about Syria.

One interesting detail: Last 12 months there was four times more asylum seekers from Kosovo than from Ukraine – where same time has been some kind of civil war ongoing anyway.  However Eurostat does not include Ukrainians fled to Russia – some one million, including 90,500 Ukrainian orphans in Russia at this moment.

Many EU countries have blamed Hungary for its hard policy and actions related to ongoing refugee crisis in EU.  However Hungary started its actions already early 2015 when Kosovo Albanians started their mass exodus to EU although their southern fence and increased staff on border materialized now when the most refugees are coming from MidEast.  More about this early stage in  The Mass Exodus of Kosovo Albanians  . 

Related to Syria Russia’s Federal Migration Service says that there are now 12,000 refugees from Syria in the Russian Federation, of whom 2,000 have received residence permits. There are far more people in Syria who would like to come Russia, including most prominently, the 100,000 Circassians, whose ancestors Russian officials expelled 150 years ago.