The government is expected to approve today (Sunday) a special budget allocation of NIS 90 million to accommodate the wave of immigrants from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The number of immigrants from these countries has increased significantly since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now, after the entry into force of the new recruitment regulations in Russia, the expectation is that the number will increase even more in the coming months.
Officially, the Russian government announced the recruitment of about 300,000 men, but the estimates are that in practice a recruitment of about a million or more is planned.
The new regulations signed by President Putin about a week ago caused a wave of people fleeing the country.
Hundreds of thousands of men of the relevant ages have already fled Russia through land border crossings and flights to the few destinations that still have direct air contact with the country, including Israel.
Russian citizens flee through the border crossing with Georgia, photo: Reuters
A queue of people waiting to cross from Russia to Finland, photo: Reuters
The Russian authorities are making it difficult to leave Russia in various ways, including limiting the number of flights and establishing mobile recruitment bureaus at the border crossings.
In light of the developments, there is concern in Israel for the fate of the country's Jews who are exposed to conscription, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs even issued a special warning to Israelis with Russian citizenship this weekend, clarifying that their Israeli citizenship does not protect them from conscription if they enter Russian territory.
Since the beginning of the war, there has been a sharp increase in the number of immigrants from Eastern Europe, when initially the overwhelming majority came from Ukraine.
Now, in light of the new recruitment regulations in Russia, it is expected that most of the immigrants will come from this country.
According to estimates, since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, more than 30 thousand immigrants from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus immigrated to Israel.
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