Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot has denied helping migrants and refugees from the Middle East travel to Belarus as European leaders scramble to deal with a migrant crisis on the Polish border […]
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Ukrainian citizens displaced following the outbreak of conflict in the Donbas are still fighting for their rights – and public officials are using them as scapegoats. (opendemocracy.net – Tetiana Bezruk – October 14, 2016) Tetiana Bezruk researches contemporary Ukrainian nationalism, political violence in the Donbas and cultural memory in post-Soviet Ukraine. A friend who moved to Kyiv from Luhansk showed […]
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Former Donetsk resident Nadia Zaslavska spoke to Dmitry Volchek from RFE/RL’s Russian Service about why the conflict in eastern Ukraine drove her from the city even though she had spent many happy years living there. (RFE/RL – rferl.org – May 24, 2016) I was born in the Dnipropetrovsk region but I spent more than 30 years in Donetsk. I built […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Josh Rogin – March 24, 2016) Some officials in Europe see Russia’s hand in the rising migration crisis, accusing the Kremlin of exacerbating anti-Muslim sentiment to benefit right-wing parties at a fragile moment for the European Union. Even before the latest terror attacks in Brussels, anti-Muslim and anti-refugee sentiment in Europe had been on the rise. […]
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… From the beginning of its military operation in Syria, Moscow has operated on the now indisputable proposition that … rampant unrest in the Middle East and … mounting challenges to the unity of the European Union are inextricably linked. The wager was that Europe would eventually seize an offer of cooperation in Syria to constrict the migrant flow and […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – March 2, 2016) NATO’s top commander warned that Russia and Syria have turned the refugee crisis into a “weapon” against the West at a time when it lacks resources to counter a “resurgent, aggressive” Russia. U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, who commands the 28-member military alliance, said the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants […]
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(Kremlin.ru – February 26, 2016) Vladimir Putin took part in a meeting of the Federal Security Service (FSB) board to review the results of the Service’s work in 2015 and set its priority tasks for 2016. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, We are here today to review the results of the Federal Security Service’s work in 2015 and […]
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(Paul Goble – Staunton, February 16, 2016) Duma deputies are proposing and the Russian Ministry for Far Eastern Development has come out in support of a plan to resettle as many as 50,000 Ukrainian refugees who had fled their country because of the fighting but have not yet found permanent residences in the Russian Federation. This plan reflects the convergence […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – The Daily Vertical – Brian Whitmore – February 15, 2016) If there was ever any doubt that Russia is engaging in little more than a game of geopolitical extortion in Syria, there shouldn’t be any more. By targeting opponents of Bashar al-Assad, Moscow has effectively assured that Syria’s civil war will continue indefinitely. By indiscriminately bombing […]
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(Interfax – January 31, 2016) Over half of Russians (53%) believe the London court had no real grounds to accuse Russian officials of involvement in the death of former Federal Security Service official Alexander Litvinenko, Levada Center has reported. The poll, which surveys 1,600 respondents, was conducted in 137 populated areas of 48 regions of Russia on Jan. 22-25. The […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Svitlana Prokopyeva and Tony Wesolowsky – PSKOV, Russia – December 18, 2015) Svitlana Moroz, her two sons, and her elderly mother have lived in the spartan Sport hotel in Pskov, in western Russia, for nearly a year and a half now. But they and hundreds more like them who fled the fighting at home in eastern […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – DMITRY BABICH, SPECIAL TO RBTH – December 8, 2015) Dmitry Babich is a political analyst at Sputnik International. In recent years, Russia and the European Union have developed a taste for stressing what divides them, particularly the “differences in values” which presumably make us two worlds apart. But there is at least one […]
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(United Nations – UN News Centre- un.org – November 9, 2015) [Reprinted with the permission of the United Nations.] The United Nations refugee agency has managed to deliver aid for the first time in over two months to areas of eastern Ukraine beyond Government control where two million people are in urgent need of assistance, reaching 12,000 people – a […]
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While the world focuses on refugees arriving in Europe from warzones in the Middle East, the plight of those fleeing war in Ukraine has been forgotten. (opendemocracy.net – Sara Cincurova – November 20, 2015) Sara Cincurova is a freelance journalist focusing on human rights. She is a former family support worker and holds a Master’s degree from the Paris Descartes […]
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Subject: Détente NOW! Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 From: “Dr. Christian Wipperfürth” <cwipperfuerth@email.de> Your readers might be interested in the “Détente NOW!” – Initiative by leading members of the Social Democratic Party (which takes part in the German government), the industrie and NGOs. It can be found at http://www.cwipperfuerth.de/2015/10/detente-now-english/ —- Pax Christi Press Release (translation) Berlin, October 2015 For a […]
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MOSCOW. Sept 24 (Interfax) – Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) expects the arrival of up to 150,000 ethnic Russians from Ukraine in 2015, and 2.6 billion rubles has been allocated from the federal budget for these purposes, FMS director Konstantin Romodanovsky has said. “Since September 2014, regional programs have been confirmed in the Rostov region and the Stavropol territory as […]
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It’s not as odd as you’d think. A centuries-old imperial conquest, along with an unusual route to Norway, may lead Syria’s migrants to wash up on Russia’s shores
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Twenty-five years ago, my family was stuck in then-Soviet Ukraine. We had nothing, and the West, including the United States, helped us and hundreds of thousands of other refugees even though we were technically “Soviet puppets,” born on the wrong side of the line. Today is a different story. Isolating a region for geopolitical considerations is one thing; withholding life-saving […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Dmitry Okrest – July 28, 2015) Dmitry Okrest is a former staff writer with The New Times and currently works as an independent journalist. While the West thinks Russia is fighting a war with Ukraine, and Moscow calls the conflict a ‘civil war’, civilians continue to flee the combat zone in eastern Ukraine. Last summer, many people made […]
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(Interfax – July 10, 2015) At least 5 million Ukrainian citizens are in need of humanitarian aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on July 10. And 1.4 million of them are internally displaced persons. According to the information of the UN, the most vulnerable group is people living in the area of the so-called “contact […]
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(From the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – unocha.org – ©2015 Reprinted with the permission of the United Nations – also appeared at unocha.org/top-stories/all-stories/five-things-you-need-know-about-crisis-ukraine – June 29, 2015 ) “We can make a difference … but we do need to get the funds,” said UN Resident Coordinator Neal Walker on Friday at a New York Headquarters Briefing on […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – June 18, 2015) A United Nations report says Russia became the world’s single largest recipient of asylum requests last year as a result of the war in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists. The figures also show that Russian authorities are being far more lenient toward Ukrainians than toward applicants from other countries. […]
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(UN News Centre – un.org – Dec. 31, 2014) Amid continuing fighting and a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Ukraine, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today announced it is launching an initiative aimed at ferrying aid to the country’s internally displaced persons (IDPs), as well as other vulnerable citizens trapped by the ongoing hostilities. The latest figures from the UN human rights office, OHCHR, […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 16 (Interfax) – More than 3.5 million Ukrainian nationals moved to Russia this year, Lilia Arestova, deputy head of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) naturalization department, said at a meeting of the committee for public support to residents of south-eastern Ukraine. “The FMS is keeping a daily record of arrivals. A total of 3,631,124 Ukrainian nationals moved to […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 8, 2014) Many Russian regions now have more refugees from Ukraine than they had expected or can handle, and officials suggest that more are likely to arrive as Ukraine’s economy and weather deteriorate. As a result, the situation of these refugees is “becoming critical,” according to experts. In today’s “Novyye izvestiya,” […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Jennifer Monaghan – July 3, 2014) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has lashed out at a U.S. State Department spokeswoman for suggesting some of the supposed refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine for Russia could be going to visit their grandmothers. Spokeswoman Marie Helf on Tuesday played down a report by the UN’s Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, […]
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