President Putin calls his compatriots home

The president of the Russian Federation signed a Directive regarding the State Program for Supporting the movement of his compatriots to Russia. According to the Directive, the program will start to function from the first of January 2007, and until then the Inter-parliamentary Commission that will guide its implementation will be created, and the Federal Service of Migration will have the role of coordinator. According to the Russian press, the migrants will be able to appeal to the representatives of Russia abroad and become participants in this program, that will propose them concrete working places in Russia (according to the offer of federal bodies) and will assist them with the movement, offering them financial support and social insurances to the members of their families. President Putin told the Russian government to elaborate the details of the program until last week. Among the pilot regions that will propose offers until the first of September are Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Lipetsk, Tambov, - in the European area, Tiumen, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk region, Primorsk, Habarovsk, Irkutsk and Amursk – in Siberia and the Extreme Orient. For assisting possible migrants it is planned to inaugurate representatives of the Federal Migration Service in 2006 in Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and in 2007 – in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, USA and Israel. According to the estimations of the specialists, in the framework of the planned program for 2006-2012, several million of Russian migrants are expected to come back to Russia, especially from the Former Soviet Union. According to some data, 20 million Russian live outside the Russian Federation. From them, according to the data from October 2007, in the Republic of Moldova live 201.281 Russian citizens, summing up to 5,9% from the population of the Republic of Moldova.