Formed 20 April 2016 Headquarters Kyiv, Ukraine Website mtot.gov.ua | Jurisdiction Ukraine Minister responsible Vadym Chernysh | |
The Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs (Ukrainian: Міністерство з питань тимчасово окупованих територій та внутрішньо переміщених осіб України) is a government ministry in Ukraine officially established on 20 April 2016 to manage occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea regions affected by Russian military intervention of 2014.
History
Vadym Chernysh was on 14 April 2016 appointed as first and current Minister of Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs in the Groysman government. On 20 April 2016 his ministry was created by merging the State Agency for restoration of Donbass (formerly part of Ministry of Regional Development) and the State Service for Russian annexed Crimea and Sevastopol (formerly under direct administration of the Cabinet of Ukraine). Chernysh is the former head of the State Agency for restoration of Donbass.
The ministry tries to "search for solutions and reintegration strategies" for Ukraine to regain control Crimea and parts of the historical region Donbass. Ukraine lost control over Crimea, which was unilaterally annexed by Russia in March 2014. In the Donbass region of the Eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian protests escalated into an armed separatist insurgency early in April 2014, when masked gunmen took control of several of the region's government buildings and towns. This led to the creation of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. Violence between the Ukrainian army and the forces of the two breakaway republics escalated into an armed conflict known as the War in Donbass. The War in Donbass lead to 1.6 million people registered as internally displaced persons by the Ukrainian government. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in March 2016 that 800,000 to 1 million of them lived within Ukrainian government controlled Ukraine.