Refugees in Europe: Russia is Managing What EU Cannot

Andrey FEDYASHIN | 27.10.2015 | 00:00

Even statistics, dull as they are, can actually contain a lot of intriguing information, and sometimes a comparative analysis and juxtaposition of data from different statistical agencies can offer startling discoveries. And it just so happened that in October, only a week apart, the EU’s Frontex border service and Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) released data about the number of refugees – Syrian (in Europe) and Ukrainian (in Russia) – who are seeking temporary-residence or work permits or permanent asylum. Both calculations were made on October 1st. The European report includes data only from the beginning of the year, while the Russian one offers statistics since April 2014. If one accepts the European statistics at their face value, without considering any geopolitical or domestic political factors, it seems quite difficult to understand exactly why the Old World fell into such a panic. According to Frontex, it turns out that 710,000 people arrived in the EU between January and the end of September. However, these latest data were provided with an added «clarification», stating that the statistics might be not entirely accurate, because the office had likely counted «a large number of people» twice. It seems that some individuals were tallied once at the EU’s external border in Greece and then counted again when they crawled across the boundary fences and cordons from Serbia, on the Hungarian and Croatian borders. But Frontex is not saying exactly how many people the EU bureaucrats counted «twice». According to the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, 600,000 people have sought refuge in the European Union this year. The UNHCR puts that number at 588,277. But the UN’s «mathematicians» have explained that this number only reflects those who arrived by sea and that they did not count all those who took land routes. So what is actually happening with this most recent and US-inspired «migration of peoples?» Go figure! By the way, the Americans who provoked this whole thing were initially willing to accept only 2,000 immigrants. Then in September the White House announced that President Obama had directed his team «to consider... accept[ing] at least 10,000 Syrian refugees». But only to consider it. What’s more, his administration added that it will take 18 to 24 months to screen and admit this number. Until then the refugees will have to remain in their camps in Europe. But of course the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State are essentially artificial creations of the CIA, State Department, and Pentagon. And the conflagrations in the Arab East, the collapse of the state in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and the civil wars in Yemen and Syria are also the fruits of Washington’s handiwork. And hundreds of thousands of refugees have flooded the EU as a direct result. But the US acts like this is all someone else’s problem and something that affects them only tangentially. The European Union has been forced to rack its brains to figure out how to take in about 700,000 people fleeing IS atrocities, while the US, which started all this by playing with matches in that region, is willing to be «saddled» with only 10,000 of these unfortunates. Once they’re screened, of course. This speaks volumes about Washington’s sense of moral responsibility for the consequences of its geopolitical exercises, does it not? According to statistics from Russia’s Federal Migration Service, 1,089,618 citizens of southeastern Ukraine have entered (and still remain in) the Russian Federation just since April 1, 2014. In total, there are 2.6 million Ukrainian citizens living in Russia. Unofficially, they may number as many as four million. More than half of them have found work in construction or business, and they send home more than $3 billion a year. Knowing the statistics, could anyone actually believe the Ukrainian propaganda that «the young Ukrainian democracy» has been subjected to a military invasion by Russian soldiers and is still fending off attacks by the Russian army in the Donbass and Lugansk? Could anyone imagine that during WWII, two million French (Dutch, Danes, Belgians, Norwegians, or Czechs...) would flee the Nazi invasion by rushing to seek refuge in Hitler’s Germany? That’s clearly absurd. What’s more, this comparison between European and Russian statistics somehow calls into question the values, civilized ideals, and attitudes of the Old World. In light of the current refugee crisis, at least. See for yourself. As of October of this year, Russia, a country with a population of 146 million, had admitted 2.6 million Ukrainians as political and economic refugees (just in accordance with the official figures that do not quite keep pace with the real numbers). Moscow has made no distinction between the two categories. Moscow has not closed its borders to them, has not erected barbed-wire fences (as the new Ukraine has done), and unlike Europe is not preparing to send hundreds of thousands back to an unknown fate – which is in all likelihood destitution or death. In terms of the size of Russia’s population, these Ukrainian refugees are equal to about 1.8% of the number of Russian citizens. In order to match that ratio, the European Union, with a population of 500 million, would have to shelter 8.9 million people! Just like Russia has, without making any excuses. I have yet to see in any European newspaper this type of comparative analysis of how the humanistic values of these two state entities actually manifest themselves. There are those who might suggest that any comparison with Ukrainian refugees is somewhat out of place. Ukraine and Russia are historically, culturally, economically, and linguistically closely tied. They share a common history and language. But the Muslims who are escaping into Europe are altogether different. It seems that no one seriously considered the potential consequences back when the EU blindly supported the US agenda to destroy Libya, bomb Syria, arm the Syrian opposition, and unleash a civil war in Yemen. The main objective was to export «democracy at the point of bayonets» and to impose an alien form of government upon those countries. http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/10/27/refugees-europe-russia-managing-what-eu-cannot.html