When Russian political activist Olga Kudrina was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for staging a protest in 2006, she fled the country. With nothing but her documents and some cash, Kudrina made her way to Ukraine.
“Ukraine is the most democratic country in the post-Soviet space and I thought I could receive protection from persecution in Russia,” said Kudrina, who was arrested after unfurling a banner reading “Putin, clear off” from a hotel window in central Moscow. She now lives in Vinnytsia after being granted asylum in 2008.
Kudrina is one of an increasing number of Russians seeking asylum abroad. And it is not only Ukraine where Russians are trying to find new homes.
Recently released figures show that the most applications from those seeking political refuge in the European Union come from Russia. More than 5,000 such appeals came in the third quarter of 2009, more than from war-torn Afghanistan or Somalia.
Russian police clash with demonstrators protesting the detention of chess grandmaster and opposition leader Garry Kasparov in Moscow on April 14, 2007. (Reuters)
Ukraine is an obvious choice. Russians don’t need a visa to enter and there’s no language barrier.
These people, at least, agree with the rankings of international organizations that place Ukraine well ahead of Russia in terms of political freedoms and civil liberties. In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2010 report, Ukraine was recognized as “free,” while Russia was classified “not free.”
“The difference is very noticeable,” Kudrina said. “Russia and Ukraine are similar in some ways. In terms of political freedoms, things are much better here, it’s much easier to get along with the police.”
Nevertheless, the number of official applications to Ukraine is small – just 72 applications from Russians last year, only six of which were accepted. But experts believe as few as 10 percent of those Russians in Ukraine who could apply for asylum do so, because of fear of being refused or extradited. Many of the refugees are from the violent North Caucasus region of Russia. Others, like Kudrina, are political activists or journalists.
In February, Kudrina founded the Union of Political Emigres, a support group aimed at helping other Russian asylum seekers in Ukraine and informing people about the reasons behind their flight. The union includes members of the National Bolshevik Party, such as Kudrina, alongside other dissidents and journalists.
Vinnytsia has a history of receiving asylum seekers. The first refugees came in 1992 following the war in neighboring Transnistria. The city is also home to former students from African countries who couldn’t return home because of political changes in their countries. Recently it has also seen more Russians, who receive help in submitting asylum claims from the Vinnytsia Human Rights Group.
Ukraine joined the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention in 2002. By law, a foreigner is eligible for refugee status if he has “reasonable apprehensions” of being persecuted in his native country because of his race, faith, nationality, citizenship, social status or political views.
But in practice, asylum seekers have little chance of success, given Ukraine’s recognition rate of 3 percent. Kudrina was one of the lucky ones. She was granted asylum after an 18-month struggle, even though the process is supposed to last six months.
“For Russians, it’s very difficult to receive asylum. The Ukrainian state incorrectly understands the status of a refugee as a political act,” said Dmytro Groisman, coordinator of the Vinnytsia Human Rights Group, which helped Kudrina with her asylum application. “This is simply not the case. It’s a humanitarian act that means the person is being persecuted and needs international protection. But our officials, in the old Soviet tradition, believe that a refugee is the enemy of the people he’s running from, and so if it’s an enemy of Russia, and we help him, we are enemies of Russia. And who wants to be an enemy of Russia?”
Asylum is a political hot potato. Earlier this month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev blasted Sweden for refusing to extradite Chechen “bandits.”
A special forces officer from the Russian Justice Ministry leads away an activist from the National Bolshevik Party outside the party office in Moscow on June 17, 2005. The movement, an ardent opponent of the Kremlin, was obliged to leave its premises on court order, and several members were detained by the authorities. (Reuters)
Experts also say regional migration service officials, who initially rule whether to grant asylum, may be prejudiced against Russian applicants by their views of the country. “The perception is that everything is fine in Russia, so they don’t deserve asylum,” said Yulia Zelvenskaya from the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. “Negative media coverage and prejudice mean some officials view Chechens as people involved in terrorism, and this can sometimes affect the application process.”
“All Chechens we worked with were ‘classic’ cases – individual cases of persecution that happened against a background of war,” said Groisman. “But all of them were refused.”
As a result, the majority of Chechens simply do not apply for asylum, fearing refusal or, worse, extradition or that the information could be provided to the authorities in Russia.
Beslan Gadayev, who was extradited from Crimea to Russia in 2006 despite a pending asylum claim, wrote to investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya that he had been tortured until he confessed to a murder he didn’t commit. The article Politkovskaya was working on when she was gunned down was about Gadayev.
Human Rights Watch’s Report 2010 notes the case last year when confidential information provided in support of four Kazakh asylum seekers in Ukraine was then given to Kazakhstan’s General Prosecutor’s Office, which launched criminal cases against people who had provided evidence of persecution in support of refugee applications. “With no clear migration policy and a flawed and restrictive refugee law that results in only three percent of asylum seekers obtaining refugee status, Ukraine continues to deny asylum seekers protection,” the report reads.
Dmytro Groisman is head of the Vinnytsia Human Rights Group, which helped Olga Kudrina apply for asylum.
Vladimir Putin‘s tight grip on power created a new wave of emigration.
Anna Polikovskaya was a journalist whose final article before her 2006 murder was about alleged torture of a Chechen extradited from Ukraine.
A recent position paper by UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, stated that it is “concerned over the state of general respect for human rights and refugee protection in line with international standards.”
Groisman highlighted Kudrina’s case as an example of the crapshoot of asylum application. “She was lucky as she applied for asylum at a time when the political element was such that allowed it to be done, when the ‘enemies’ of Russia were welcomed here. I am certain that now she wouldn’t have received asylum. Refugees who arrived after Olga with the same problems were refused,” he said.
A top official from the State Committee on Nationalities and Religions, the agency in charge of processing refugee applications, declined to comment.
Zelvenskaya said the Union of Political Emigres could play an important role in changing the incorrect perception of asylum seekers from Russia as exclusively Chechen. “It’s a good initiative to highlight that any residents of Russia can be persecuted because of their political opinions,” she said.
Kudrina says she has already received a number of requests for help and is actively helping a number of people. But despite this fulfilling and important work, the thing she wants most is to return home.
“I miss my homeland, but I don’t regret what I did,” says Kudrina. “I hope things will change in the next ten years or so. I want to return, but at the moment, I don’t see any changes happening.”
Kyiv Post staff writer James Marson can be reached at [email protected]
