Ethnic Ukrainians with Russian Birth Citizenship Facing Increasingly Serious Problems Inside Russia and Abroad, Belyayeva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Ethnic Ukrainians born in the Russian Federation and who have Russian citizenship from birth face serious problems both in that country and in Western countries if they are able to flee abroad, according to Nina Belyayeva, a representative of the Eastern Slobodzhanshchyna national liberation.
    Inside the Russian Federation, she says, such people many of whom are rapidly recovering their ethnic roots face repressions of various kinds; and when they seek to flee, they face a lack of understanding in the West of their predicament (abn.org.ua/uk/vyzvolni-ruhy/nina-belyayeva-shidna-slobozhanshhyna-cze-ukrayinska-etnichna-zemlya-bilsha-chastyna-yakoyi-nyni-perebuvaye-v-mezhah-rosiyi/).
    Many of those who seek to flee Russian oppression don’t go to Ukraine because of the war and because they lack close relatives there, but when they go to other countries, they often can’t get residence permits or the path to citizenship because of charges that the Russian authorities have brought against them, Belyayeva says.
    Western governments seldom recognize the bind in which these Ukrainians find themselves and are reluctant to offer them permanent residence. Belyayeva says that her group is working to compile a list of Ukrainian activists with Russian citizenship who have been charged with various crimes by the Russian authorities.
    Such a list will help Western countries understand the nature of their predicament and thus become more willing to provide them with asylum of one kind or another. Otherwise there is a great risk that these Ukrainians will be sent back to the Russian Federation because the false conviction that they are Russian citizens first of all.
    There are several million people of Ukrainian heritage in the Russian Federation, most but far from all in regions that the Ukrainians refer to as klins or “wedges.” (On these groups, see see jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-real-wedge-issue-ukrainian-regions-in.html and the sources cited therein.)
    Relatively few of these people are actively identifying as Ukrainians, but enough are to have sparked real concern in Moscow (jamestown.org/program/kremlin-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/). It would be a tragedy if Western ignorance about their history and current status meant that the West would become Moscow’s ally in repressing such people.  
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