More than 1 mln people residing in Chechnya

According to the preliminary information of the Russian population census that finishes on Wednesday, 1,088,000 people are residing in Chechnya, which exceeds the estimates of the Chechen government, said Russian Minister for National Policy Vladimir Zorin.

The Chechen population was expected to equal 800,000 people, he said. Yet the demographic growth in the republic "was not a surprise" for the State Committee on the All-Russian population census, Zorin added.

"Census results in Chechnya are not so much of social and economic as of political importance. They have demonstrated that the Chechen people, despite all the hard events of the recent years, conceive themselves as part of the Russian Federation and want to live in their motherland," the minister emphasized.

The results of the Chechen census were significantly influenced by the work for returning temporarily displaced people from Ingushetia over the past month, Zorin explained.