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JERUSALEM (Reuters) – More than 31,000 people from Ukraine and Russia have emigrated to Israel since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, a large build-up since the pre-war period, according to official data released on Wednesday.
Between Feb. 24 and July 31, Israel received 12,175 new immigrants from Ukraine and 18,891 from Russia, the Central Bureau of Statistics said, providing information from the Immigration Ministry.
That’s 318 percent more than in an era in 2019, when a total of 9,774 new immigrants arrived from both countries.
Most immigrants from Russia and Ukraine are Jewish, but some may only have close relatives who are Jewish. Under Israel’s Law of Return, a user wishes that at least one Jewish grandparent would be entitled to immediate citizenship.
About 63 percent of Ukrainian immigrants are women, while those from Russia were similarly divided widely between men and women.
Fighting in Ukraine has left thousands dead, devastated several cities and driven a third of Ukrainians from their homes. Russia stayed away thanks to unprecedented Western sanctions imposed after the invasion.
Israel has a Russian-speaking population of more than 1. 3 million, or about 15 consistent with one hundred of the population.
The statistics office also said that in 2021, immigration to Israel, called aliyah in Hebrew, increased nearly 30 percent from 2020 to 25,497. Half of the immigrants came from the former Soviet republics, basically from Russia and Ukraine. About 14 percent, or about 3,500, came from the United States and France.
In 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic, Israel recorded 33,247 immigrants.
(Reporting through Steven Scheer; Editing via Mark Heinrich)