GENEVA, June 16. /ITAR-TASS/. The number of internally displaced persons in Ukraine is nearing 20,000, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Monday, June 16.

He said 19,000 people had been identified as internally displaced people in Ukraine.

Earlier in the day, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos referred to 17,500 displaced people in Ukraine. The difference in estimates may be due to the rapidly changing situation in the country.

At the same time, the actual number of internally displaced people in Ukraine may reach 34,000. Amos quoted trustworthy sources as saying that the movement of people was registered in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and 15,000 people had fled the city of Sloviansk alone. However these numbers provided by the local authorities have not yet been included in the UN official statistics.

The United Nations last published such data in late May when the number of internally displaced persons in Ukraine was 10,000.

Amos could not say how many people had crossed from Ukraine into neighboring Russia.

Meanwhile, Russian regions are getting ready for a surge in the flow of refugees from the south-east of Ukraine. Over the past month, more than 122,000 refugees from Ukraine have entered the Rostov region alone, and 70,000 of them decided to stay in Russia.