Crimean authorities suggest that rich people from eastern Ukraine leave Crimea

Sergei Aksionov, the head of Crimea, has called on the rich residents of the eastern regions of Ukraine who have obtained real estate in Crimea as a result of suspicious schemes to leave the region.

According to Aksionov, many wealthy residents of the eastern regions of Ukraine moved to Crimea after Kyiv began its military operation in Donbas.

"In Yalta, there are many Rolls-Royces and other expensive cars owned by people who stole state property in Crimea and bought [it] with money they illegally obtained on the territory of Ukraine. And now they have settled here instead of defending their native republic [the DPR and the LPR]. They are now urgently changing their passports, we know this tendency," Aksionov said at a recent meeting of the Crimean Council of Ministers in Simferopol on Tuesday.

Aksionov ordered the regional department of the Federal Migration Service work with the Interior Ministry to find such people.

"I am asking you to talk with them. We recommend that such people go and fulfill their civil duty, go through a 'penal military unit.' There is nothing for them here except correctional labor," Aksionov said.

Aksionov said this does not apply to the overwhelming majority of forced migrants from Ukraine. "We will help ordinary people," he said.

Pyotr Yarosh, the head of the Crimean department of the Federal Migration Service, said there may be some 250,000 residents of Ukraine in Crimea.

"The difference between the people who have come in and out is

248,000 people," Yarosh said.