Stepan Bandera - Ukrainas nationalhjälte - Nazikoppling och Putins avnazifiering

Ukrainian displaced people in Russia are also being sent to Siberia

Mauro Indelicato
APRIL 12, 2022

More than twenty thousand people from Ukraine and the Russian regions adjacent to it would have been displaced from Moscow even more than 5,000 km away. This is what emerged from a Kremlin document viewed by The Independent . The official reason for the movements is due to the need to keep people from war zones as far away as possible from the most dangerous scenarios. The risk, however, is obviously that thousands of families come into contact with different realities from the original ones, with all the difficulties and dangers that this could entail.

The plan of the Kremlin

Before the start of war operations in Ukraine , Russia had already prepared plans for the accommodation of displaced persons. On February 18, when in Donetsk and Luganskthe air alarm sirens were activated, the governments of the two pro-Russian republics proclaimed a state of emergency. The fear, up to that moment, was more on the separatist side than on the Ukrainian side. With the declaration of emergency, mass emigration was started, especially of the most vulnerable population. Thousands crossed the borders with Russia and a first reception plan was implemented from Moscow which, among other things, promised Rubles to families displaced from the Donbass. The engines of the Russian army vehicles, however, began to be activated. From then on, the all-round war would be triggered within the Ukrainian territory.

And so, according to The Independent, the Kremlin has put in place an overall plan to redistribute at least 95,739 displaced people throughout the territory of the federation. Partly coming from the areas in the hands of the separatists, partly from the Ukrainian regions later occupied by Russian soldiers. The decree authorizing the reception plan dates back to last month. “Taking into account the current situation in Ukraine - reads the document released by the British newspaper - the Russian Federation approves the distribution of citizens to the constituent entities of the Federation itself”. According to the vision of Moscow, the "current situation in Ukraine" would mean the problem of the safety of the families to be hosted. A plan therefore that would confirm the Kremlin's line, according to which Russian-speaking people residing in the aforementioned territories run risks linked to possible retaliation by the Ukrainian side. Just on this Tuesday the sameVladimir Putin has increased the dose in this regard: "In the Donbass - he said during a meeting with Lukashenko - there was a risk of genocide and we had to intervene".

Accommodations away from home

War refugees generally do not want to stray too far from their country. We have seen this in Syria , where despite a large number of displaced people who took the road to Europe between 2015 and 2016, the vast majority of refugees found shelter in neighboring countries Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. A rule that certainly also applies to those fleeing Ukraine, so much so that only a residual part of the Ukrainian displaced people who left the western regions of the country went beyond the borders of neighboring Poland and Romania .. On the eastern side, those who have been taken over by the neighboring Russia have remained within the territory of the federation, the extent of which, however, is very vast. The problem therefore arose for those families whose final destination envisaged by the Moscow government is in Russian regions even more than 5,000 km away from Ukraine.

In particular, of the 95,739 people welcomed by Russia, according to the document cited by the Independent , 25,639 were sent to provinces and cities very distant from the original regions. For 11,398 the transfer to the Federal District of Siberia was planned , for 7,218 instead to the District of the Far East and finally for 7,023 to the Northern Caucasus District. In proportion, it is as if a Ukrainian refugee arrived in Poland were then transferred to the Azores. A distance that could then risk extending the times for returning home and causing problems in the present for integration into the host territories. A Russian-speaking citizen from eastern Ukraine should in fact live in areas, as in the case of the North Caucasus or the Far East, where Russian is not always the prevailing language.

Also the British newspaper, citing other Russian sources, pointed out that the people evacuated from Mariupol , a city now almost entirely in Russian hands and from where many citizens have been displaced, would be made to sign a specific document in which refugees would be asked to claim to have lost their home as a result of Ukrainian bombing.