VIENNA, September 03, 20:21 /ITAR-TASS/. Almost 4,000 people have returned to Ukraine from Russia over the past week, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in their report on Wednesday.

The monitors observed a clear reversal in the flow of people crossing the border with more people exiting Russia into Ukraine.

“Since August 26, the majority of border crossers have been going back into Ukraine with an average net flow of minus 429 per day for both Border Crossing Points in the last week and since that day 3,857 people have returned to Ukraine through both Border Crossing Points,” the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission’s report covering a period from August 20 to September 3 said.

The observers said the number of entries/exits had remained stable at an average of 6,523 per day at the Donetsk and Gukovo border crossing points in southern Russia.

They said the situation at both border crossing points was calm. “People crossing the border talk to the Observer Teams (OTs) regularly and continue to describe the situation in the Luhansk region as dire. The OTs continued to receive numerous accounts of severe destruction caused by artillery fire which resulted in the interruption of water, gas and electricity supplies, the latter apparently unavailable for more than five weeks in some areas including the city of Luhansk itself,” the report said.