MOSCOW (Sputnik), Alexander Mosesov — The unwillingness of the United States in hosting sound numbers of refugees from Syria is "not surprising", the head of the Bruges Group think tank told Sputnik on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, US President Barack Obama ordered his administration to admit up to 10,000 more Syrian refugees in the next fiscal year. However, that is still four times less than Germany is expected to accept over the course of two years.
"Countries have only a very selective interest to refugees and America will only take a small proportion… It's not surprising that America is unwilling to take any immigrants [from Syria]," Robert Oulds said.
"There has been a refugee crisis for several years in Europe already, that is one million people that had to flee Eastern Ukraine to Russia because of the actions of the Ukrainian army and the various extremist militias attached to the Ukrainian Armed Forces," he said.
According to Russia's Federal Migration Service, more than 1 million people fled to Russia following the outbreak of the civil war in Ukraine, of whom approximately 600,000 decided to settle there permanently.
"That, of course, is hardly ever mentioned in the Western media. It's only when the people are knocking on the door of the EU it is becoming an issue," Oulds concluded.
According to UN estimates, some 7.6 million people have been internally displaced in Syria and another 4 million are living as refugees outside the country as a result of the four-year-long civil war between the government and opposition forces.
