Migrant flow from Africa, Mideast no threat to Russia - Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/. The flow of illegal migrants from countries of the Middle East and Africa poses no significant problem to Russia at present, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry Department for Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights Anatoly Viktorov said at the Federation Council upper house of parliament on Tuesday. "Among the security challenges carried by migration there is illegal migration in the first place and the attendant threats that are well known - drug trafficking, religious extremism, trafficking in human beings," the diplomat said. "In this sense the situation is the most difficult with migration from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries." "As for the wave of illegal migration from countries of Africa, the Middle East, this flow poses no major problem to Russia yet," Viktorov said. "Although it has not bypassed it - taking into account the increased in 2014 and continuing this year flow of refugees at the western section of the Russian border from where they try to cross into the European Union." Earlier on Tuesday, the border department of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said that migrants from African countries have been trying to reach the European Union territory through Russia’s Baltic exclave Kaliningrad. Last month, 20 cases were registered, the authority's press service said. Migrants come from Egypt, India, Cameroon, Congo, Cuba, Morocco and Rwanda. "They arrive in the region on tourist visas. They are assured that they can freely reach the EU from Kaliningrad," an FSB official said, adding that these visas allow no such possibility. The next step is to illegally cross the region’s border with Lithuania or Poland and to acquire refugee status in the EU. Kaliningrad border guards catch the migrants upon their arrival in the Khrabrovo airport, however. "Violations are prevented directly at the state border," the official said. Over the past 11 months, the number of similar violations reached 89, compared with 73 cases last year. The maximum number was registered in 2013, when 135 foreigners arrived in Kaliningrad region seeking to get to the EU. Read more