Immigration to Israel from Ukraine, Russia jumps amid war

More than 31,000 people from Ukraine and Russia have emigrated to Israel since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, a massive increase from a similar pre-war period, official data showed on Wednesday.

Between 24 February and 31 July, Israel received 12,175 new immigrants from Ukraine and 18,891 from Russia, the Central Bureau of Statistics said, citing data from the Immigration Ministry.

That's 318 percent higher than a similar period in 2019 when a total of 9,774 new immigrants arrived from the two countries.

Most of the immigrants from Russia and Ukraine are Jews, but some may only have close relatives who are Jewish.

Under Israel's so-called Law of Return, a person needs at least one Jewish grandparent to be entitled to immediate citizenship.

However, millions of Palestinians living as refugees abroad are unable to return to their homes after they or their ancestors were ethnically cleansed during the 1948 creation of the Israeli state.

Some 63 percent of Ukrainian immigrants are women, while those from Russia were largely split evenly between men and women.

The fighting in Ukraine has killed thousands, devastated a number of cities and driven one third of Ukrainians from their homes.

Russia has been isolated by unprecedented Western sanctions imposed over the invasion.

Israel has a large Russian-speaking population of more than 1.3 million - around 15 percent of the population.

The statistics bureau also said that in 2021, immigration to Israel rose nearly 30 percent from 2020 to 25,497.

Half of the immigrants came from former Soviet republics, mostly from Russia and Ukraine.

About 14 percent each – or around 3,500 – came from the United States and France.

In 2019, the last year before the coronavirus pandemic, Israel recorded 33,247 immigrants.

(Reuters)