As IA Rosbalt reports, earlier the head of the Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation (FMS) Konstantin Romodanovsky made it clear that Russia does not refuse to accept citizens of Syria and Libya. At the same time, he noted that the current flows of refugees to Europe are arranged in such a way that they do not threaten Russia. According to him, Russia is actually not interested in refugees from Africa and the Middle East, and only a small number of migrants deal with the migration service - when transiting to Scandinavian countries.
Indeed, so far refugees from Syria and Iraq have not shown much interest in Russia. They are attracted primarily by Germany and are not satisfied even with relatively prosperous Hungary. Nevertheless, the situation may change, and Rosbalt decided to ask experts their opinion on what state policy on this issue should be.
"Russia is a leading country on the world stage, and I am perplexed by the fact that we somehow do not hear about us providing a place for people fleeing Syria. All Syrians who have come here say that the courts chronically do not grant them refugee status," said Sergei Nikitin, head of the representative office of the international human rights organization Amnesty International, in an interview with radio station Govorit Moskva. He called the current system for receiving forced migrants in Russia "archaic" and not meeting current realities.
Human rights activists helping migrants admit: the FMS is still extremely reluctant to grant official refugee status to people fleeing wars in the Middle East and Africa. Throughout the Syrian crisis, only a few have received such a right in Russia. In addition, only about two thousand people have obtained temporary asylum for a period of one year.
For comparison, according to the report of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of migrants who arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of the year has exceeded 378,000 people. At the same time, according to expert forecasts, at least another 850,000 migrants will move to the European continent in the next year and a half.
Svetlana Gannushkina, chair of the committee 'Civil Assistance', confirmed that the central office of the FMS is in solidarity with European colleagues. However, on the ground the position is completely different: they have not been granting refugee status or temporary asylum there recently. The human rights activist, citing data from the migration service, says that there are only 12,000 Syrians on the territory of Russia. More than half of them, according to her, have grounds to seek asylum.
"People constantly turn to us. We had a huge flow during 2012-2013, but with the appearance of Ukrainians it became smaller," Gannushkina said. At the same time, she is confident that Russia is not threatened by the prospect of a migration crisis similar to the European one.
"Many human rights activists face problems, constantly requesting information from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the current situation in Syria, because this is required for submission to courts so that refugees are not deported and statuses are granted faster," said Yevgeny Bobrov, a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC).
In turn, Yuri Moskovsky, director of projects of the Foundation for the Development of International Relations 'Good Neighborliness', believes that only those Syrians whose relatives have managed to settle here arrive in Russia. 'These are mainly graduates of Russian universities who remained on the territory of the Russian Federation. People come to them, families come, they themselves have married here. Therefore, it is not entirely correct to say that we do not accept people,' the expert emphasized.
According to him, so far at the official level there are 'talks' about moving to the territory of the Russian Federation of Circassians, 'descendants of those muhajirs who left for the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century as a result of the Caucasian wars.' 'Indigenous' residents of the Middle East countries will not decide to go to Russia 'for geographic reasons.' 'The issue was raised several years ago. I said then: 'Look at the map,'' Moskovsky explains. 'You need to sail through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles on boats, through the Black Sea or something? How should that look? Or try to get from Turkish territory again on boats? This is a rather difficult journey.'
Moreover, according to the expert, mass migration from war-torn states is hindered by the strict border control system in the Russian Federation, as well as the corresponding work of law enforcement agencies, executive authorities and the FMS. 'It is indeed not very easy to obtain refugee status here – as well as forced migrant status,' Moskovsky admits. 'For receiving refugees from Ukraine, the Moscow region, for example, was completely closed. People do get this status, but only if they have relatives living here. Otherwise, the flow tried to be redirected to other regions of the Russian Federation.'
However, if in the case of receiving Ukrainian refugees Russia still had some margin of economic strength, now the situation is critical, believes Lidia Grafova, chair of the executive committee of the Forum of Migrant Organizations. 'From a legal point of view, we, of course, have no right to refuse people. But if we think realistically, Russia physically has no ability to provide them with any kind of human existence,' she says.
The attitude of the FMS bodies towards refugees from Syria causes the human rights activist feelings of bewilderment and indignation. According to her, many Syrians are deported from Russia after being denied asylum, and children of refugee status applicants are not provided with conditions for study. 'On the one hand, Russia now wants to save the planet, become a regulator of the conflict in Syria,' she states. 'On the other hand, to some extent we, albeit indirectly, are participants in this war. After all, we supply weapons, we do not hide it. And when victims of this war flee to us, treating them the way we have long been treating them is inhumane.'
However, the human rights activist is not quick to call on the authorities to take active steps so that the current situation does not lead to a violation of the rights of refugees from Ukraine. “Pushing the FMS to do this, knowing that because of this tens of hundreds of thousands of others would get worse, I would consider impermissible for myself,” summed up Lidiya Grafova.