Does Putin want to blackmail Europe with refugees? Thousands of naked people on Bondi Beach in Sydney – they want to tell us something

Queues for employment offices, arrival centers at main stations, full accommodations: these are the images that characterized the spring of 2022, when hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine came to Germany. Well, many fear that Russian missile terror in Ukraine could once again force thousands to flee.

And the fears persist. German politicians and Eastern European governments have repeatedly warned that Russia could also try to put pressure on the EU with organized refugee flows – as Belarus did about a year ago. The state then flew in people from, for example, Iraq or Syria and sent them to the border.

The result: Poland sent the army to the border, violent confrontations broke out. The victims were the people: migrants camped for days in the woods near the Polish border, sometimes in the snow. There would have been several deaths, how many is unknown.

Last year already showed that the EU is struggling to find a way to deal with this. On the one hand, many of these people on European soil have the right to have their concerns investigated – no matter which route they come from. On the other hand, Poland, for example, argued that one could not allow oneself to be blackmailed.

But could Russia actually have a significant influence on refugee movements? The different theories at a glance:

Attacks on infrastructure in Ukraine

It is a terrible mixed situation for many Ukrainians: almost nine months of war are already behind them. Winter is now setting in and in many places in the country temperatures drop well below zero at night. And Russia is deliberately bombing the country’s energy supply.

This has enormous consequences: in many places there is neither electricity nor fresh water nor functioning heating systems. Aid organizations warn that these attacks will force many people to flee. The situation is already dramatic: according to aid organization Care, 17.7 million Ukrainians depend on humanitarian aid and six million are internally displaced. If the situation worsens, an additional five million people could leave the country.

Now it is being warned that these attacks are not only directed against Ukraine, but also against the EU states – with the calculus to put pressure on the countries with further fleeing movement. Because: if more and more people flee the country, the pressure on the states, especially in Eastern and Central Europe, will increase further. Poland is currently preparing for a new large refugee movement, about 100,000 beds are available.

How much calculation is behind it? Political scientist Raphael Bossong of the German Foundation for Science and Politics (SWP) says he does not think the primary motive for the attacks was to unleash a mass flight. However, a major flight from the Russian leadership would not be inconvenient.

Military expert Carlo Masala estimates Russia is more interested. “They are trying to bomb Ukraine in the dark,” he said in a video interview with t-online. According to Masala, the massive rocket attacks are not only aimed at Kiev, but also at large parts of Ukraine. This could significantly reduce the likelihood of internal displacement – and many more people could be forced to flee the country. “I think it’s part of the strategy to increase the pressure on European societies and European politics.”

But it could get worse. For example, if Russia uses weapons of mass destruction, it could lead to an exodus. For example, migration expert Gerald Knaus expects a “historic winter of displacement if the situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate and the supply of heat and electricity does not work in the winter because the Russian war of aggression destroys power plants or weapons of mass destruction,” Knaus said in October in the newspapers of the Funke media group.

The route via Belarus is still active

After the escalation at the Polish-Belarusian border in the fall of 2021, numbers fell again. Poland built a fence along the border strip and the EU imposed a series of sanctions – for example against the airlines that brought people from Iraq or Syria to Belarus. However, the escape movement via this route has not come to rest.

There is still constant immigration – which has actually increased in recent times. Russia also plays a role here: people often fly to Moscow and from there travel on to Belarus to get to the Polish border. As the “Spiegel” reported on Friday, the federal police in Germany are increasingly registering people entering the country with Russian visas or entry stamps in their passports.

This number has risen sharply since September: in May just under 320, in October 1,500. The federal police counted 8,000 people coming through Russia throughout the year, many of them from Arab countries. The “Spiegel” also reports from a confidential official analysis of the summer that it is not only about newly issued visas: people who have been in Russia for a long time are arrested again and again.

It is not known whether the Russian side is actively promoting migration through this route, apart from issuing visas. However, the authorities do not seem to prevent it either.

In Belarus, the authorities seemed to be shifting to a more passive role in recent months. Migrants report that some of them have been stopped and returned by Belarusian border guards. However, according to information from Poland and Lithuania, active funding continues.

A few days ago, Polish border guards released a video intended to show a group of more than 30 people being escorted through the forest to the border by Belarusian troops. “The Belarusian services do not stop organizing the illegal crossing of the Polish border,” the border guard writes.

Belarus is currently benefiting from the fact that the fence is not yet equipped with sensors and cameras everywhere, according to Polish authorities. According to their information, the number of registered border crossings is also increasing sharply. The authorities in Germany are also registering this: in Brandenburg there is a clear upward trend at the Polish border. According to the federal police, 388 people arrived in the federal state in January and 848 in September.

Suddenly, rather unusual nationalities also play a role in illegal entry into the EU. Recently, the Polish border police detained people from Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan. Lax visa rules apply to all three countries in Russia. The website of the embassy in Pakistan reads in big red letters: “Tourist visa service has resumed!”

Are Russia planning a Belarus scenario over Kaliningrad?

Will the new migration route pass through the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad? The Polish government has recently made this accusation. Accordingly, Russia should plan to fly people to Belarus and send them to the EU, as it did in 2021.

The suspicion was aroused by the fact that Kaliningrad airport introduced the open skies regime in early October, which means that foreign airlines can now also land there. In response, Poland has been building a fence along the border since early November.

However, there are no signs of a Kaliningrad scenario: There have been only 11 illegal border crossings so far this year, the border police spokeswoman told “Balkan Insight” reporters in November. In November she reported on a somewhat more unusual case: three Tajiks tried to cross the border to enter the EU. In fact, the Russian border guards alerted their Polish colleagues and the men were brought back.

More migration via Serbia – with calculation?

During the corona pandemic, relatively few people tried to get to the EU via the Balkan route. But their number is increasing again. In September alone, the EU Border Protection Service recorded nearly 20,000 people entering the EU through the Western Balkans – twice as many as in the same month last year.

The focus is currently on the non-EU country of Serbia. A particularly large number of people are currently entering the EU through Serbia’s borders – causing problems with Brussels. Some politicians hinted that there might be a calculation behind it. For example, the Brandenburg Minister of the Interior Michael Stübgen (CDU) compared Serbia with Belarus in a talk show on rbb. People arrive in the capital Belgrade with charter flights, similar to Minsk last year, he said on “Wieprecht”.

Stübgen’s accusation seems to fit with the image that the pro-Russian government in Belgrade has been portraying since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Serbian President Alexandar Vucic, for example, long rejected sanctions against Russia and also received high-ranking Russian officials in Belgrade. politicians. And in state-affiliated newspapers, Russian propaganda is partly copied one-on-one. More about this here.

However, experts do not see Serbia acting on behalf of Russia upon accession. “These are not verifiable rumors,” says political scientist Bossong. He sees a reason for the higher number of entries via Serbia in the country’s visa policy. For several years now, the state has allowed citizens from states that do not recognize Kosovo as independent, such as Tunisia, India or Burundi, to enter the country without a visa. Citizens of the latter two countries have been quite uncommon on the Balkan route so far. However, under pressure from the EU, the country has lifted the arrangement for Tunisia and Burundi in recent days.

Another reason could be corruption. The main routes across the Balkans change from time to time. According to research by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, smugglers have good relations with Serbian authorities and police. So it is quite possible that entry through Serbia is currently one of the easier ones and is therefore used more often.

Political scientist Bossong warns against hastily confusing the current migration on the Balkan route with a possible hybrid war tactic by Russia. Not much to suggest at the moment.