KIEV, June 20 (Xinhua) -- About 500,000 families, which were displaced by the conflict in eastern Ukraine, are in dire need of housing aid, a senior Ukrainian official said here on Tuesday.
"According to optimistic calculations, it will require at least 5 billion U.S. dollars to provide housing to all those affected," Georgy Tuka, Ukrainian deputy minister for the temporarily occupied territories and internally displaced persons, told reporters at a press conference.
The government plans to attract funds from local and foreign investors to provide housing in other parts of the country to those who left their homes in eastern Ukraine, Tuka said.
The conflict between government troops and pro-independence insurgents in eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions since 2014 has uprooted more than two million Ukrainians from their home.
About 1.6 million of them found a shelter in other cities across Ukraine, while the rest applied for refugee status or temporary asylum in the neighboring countries.
