Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories
The Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories () 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. The Honcharuk Government in August 2019 merged the Ministry for Veterans Affairs into the ministry. But its succeeding Shmyhal Government reversed this merger in March 2020. History. Vadym Chernysh was on 14 April 2016 appointed as the first 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 Donbas (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 Donbas. The ministry tries to "search for solutions and reintegration strategies" for Ukraine to regain control Crimea and parts of the historical region Donbas. Ukraine lost control over Crimea, which was unilaterally annexed by Russia in March 2014. In the Donbas region of 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 Donbas. The war in Donbas led to 1.6 million people becoming internally displaced persons, according to the registry of 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. The Honcharuk Government (on 29 August 2019) merged the Ministry for Veterans Affairs into the ministry degrading the first to an agency as it previously existed. On 23 January 2020 then Minister Oksana Koliada stated that the Ministry would likely be split up again into a separate Ministry for Veterans Affairs with the Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs to be renamed "Ministry of Reintegration". Indeed on 4 March 2020 the new Shmyhal Government undid the merge of the two ministries. Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied