An EU spokeswoman for the European Commission said Thursday that the bloc should give asylum to Russians fleeing the mobilization order, but the EU’s members are not on the same page.
Anita Hipper, an EU spokeswoman for migration, said that the situation is “unprecedented” and said work was ongoing between EU members to find a common approach.
The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have already come out against giving refuge to Russians who are looking to avoid the draft. On Thursday, the Czech Republic said it wouldn’t grant humanitarian visas for Russians fleeing the mobilization.
“I understand that Russians are fleeing from ever more desperate decisions by Putin. But those running because they don’t want to fulfill a duty imposed by their own government, they don’t meet the criteria for humanitarian visa,” said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky.
In Germany, several officials have signaled Berlin would be willing to take in Russians who don’t want to be drafted. “Deserters threatened with serious repression can, as a rule, obtain international protection in Germany,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, according to DW.
Under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order for a partial mobilization, 300,000 reservists will be called up. Russian officials say that 300,000 is just 1% of its reserve force, signaling they could later expand the mobilization. The order sparked protests across Russia, leading to the detention of over 1,300 protesters, according to the Russian human rights group OVD-Info.
Every Russian deserter liable to get drafted in Russia must be placed into a prisoner of war camp. The “host” country must pay for these camps and for the maintenance of the prisoners.
The country that does that would then admit it is a party to the conflict. A POW camp is the construct of a belligerent.
Sorry, I was wrong to use the expression “prisoners of war” for these cases. Here is an example from WWII which might explain better what I meant.
During that war thousands of Germans, men and women and nearly all German Jews, crossed the Pyrenees from France into Spain. They claimed to be fugitives a designation which Franco accepted. However, to remain neutral in the war between Germany and France+GB, Franco had to prevent that males of draftable age who could reach Portugal then England would volunteer for, say, the British armed forces and start fighting against Germany.
To prevent that, all of these German males 18 to 60 were locked up in camps. The younger ones could live free in specific towns until they got 18.
An interesting tidbit. FDR had ordered our State Department to pay for the living of these German refugees, including the “locked up” males. The funds were transmitted to the Spanish Government by our ambassador in Madrid.
In late 1944 Franco ordered that all of these German refugees must leave Spain. What happened is remarkable. They were all transported in neutral ships from Malaga in Spain to Haifa in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. Not a single ship was attacked by the belligerents.
Hence the Russian refugees who reach and stay in Ukraine can volunteer for the Ukrainian armed forces but might be executed if captured by the Russian army. Those who reach Poland or any other NATO state must be locked up to prevent them from going to Ukraine.
Biden, his administration, Trump, his administration, Obama, his administration, W, his administration and all the living people in Blair’s administration, HW’s administration and Clinton’s administration should go to POW Camps and rot there.
Of course they don’t want them. We’ve seen what happens to territories with a certain population of ethnic Russians — Putin decides they should be absorbed.
Ah, it must be a Putin ploy then. Otherwise, he’d just execute them, right? What would Hitler do?
Well, that went Godwin’s law in no time flat.
That was sarcasm since he’s constantly compared to Hitler.
To be fair, it’s kind of hard to tell around here sometimes. Which I guess is Poe’s law.
How the F**k does Putin do it??? He’s winning an economic war against nations that have economies that total 50 times his own. Now he’s gotten thousands of Russian Eurotrash to VOLUNTARILY leave Russia at no cost to the Russian people!
LOL Good one.
The conscripts who are deserting may have a difficult time coming back.
It’s a creative dictatorship…
I don’t think any of this is joke worthy… Russian people who are fleeing are in need of sanctuary, not prisons or camps. Surely, there must be allowances for such conditions?…
There are international laws about political asylum, they should accept these refugees.
Tell that to Afghans, Syrians who are still living in tents. We are accepting Ukraine citizens fleeing because “they are so much like us” as a journalist described them several months ago. Not so persons from Middle East countries we have made a mess of.
It is true we frequently fail to live up to our moral obligations. The Baltic states in particular are wary of large concentrations of Russians and not without reasons I would say.
If they actually considered Russia was prosecuting an “illegal invasion” they would be legally and morally bound to welcome them.
There are no Russians fleeing and the reporters on the ground and on the Polish border and other borders have confirmed this. It is just another western lie….lol
So really no need to disagree about what to do with people who don’t exist.
Since the NATO Nations have caused the war in Ukraine to occur, they should accept Russian as well as Ukrainian Refugees. They should also accept refugees from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, where they started open wars, countries like Pakistan where they constantly send drone strikes, countries where they have secret wars like Somalia and countries where the sanctions are killing the people like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba etc.