MOSCOW, August 05. /ITAR-TASS/. Some 60,000 Ukrainians turned to the Russian migration authorities asking to be granted a refugee status or a permanent asylum in Russia after they left their crisis-hit country, the head of the Russian Federal Migration Service (FMS) said on Tuesday.

“Some 60,000 people applied either for the refugee status or for a permanent asylum,” Konstantin Romodanovsky said.

The FMS, he said, expects this number to surge as a new governmental resolution limiting the timeframe of issuing a temporary asylum to the period of three days since the date of application had recently came into effect. The number could reach a minimum of 100,000, according to him.

Romodanovsky said a total of two million Ukrainians are currently staying in Russia with 600,000 of them coming from the embattled southeastern regions of Ukraine and 36,000 staying in Russia’s temporary set-up shelters.

Ukrainians continue fleeing the war-torn Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine where the Ukrainian military, units of the ‘national guard’ and squads of the Right Sector ultra-rightwing nationalists are conducting a dragged-out punitive operation against the people demanding federalization of the country and greater rights for the native speakers of the Russian language.

On early Monday a group of 438 Ukrainian troops and border guards from pro-Kiev forces crossed the border into Russia as they first asked for permission to enter the country seeking asylum.

According to Vasily Malayev, a spokesman for the southern border department with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), They said they were tired of war and wanted no further involvement.