Migrantophobia Threatening to ‘Ukrainianize’ Russia and Undermine Its Unity, Eurasianist Warns

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 4 – Attacks on migrants by Russian nationalists threaten to play the same role in the Russian Federation that attacks on ethnic Russians and Russian culture did in Ukraine, undermining its unity and threatening the survival of the state, Aleksey Dzermant, an ethnic Belarusian who supports a multi-national Russian state and Eurasianism.
    What is happening today in Russia with nationalists attacking Central Asian migrant workers and often by extension non-Russians generally recalls what happened in Ukraine, a place “extremely similar in all relations to Russia” and where Ukrainian nationalists at the urging of the West began by attacking ethnic Russians (gumilev-center.ru/kak-ukrainiziruyut-rossiyu/).
    “No one doubts that illegal immigration must be stopped and that crime among migrants must be fought but for this, one must work with the particular features of the Russian political and economic system” rather than allow it to be hijacked by nationalists who are in fact doing the work of the Western enemies of Russia, Dzermant argues.
    If Russian nationalists are not reined in on this issue, he suggests, then Russia will be at risk of becoming a second Ukraine, a development that will undermine everything the Russian nationalists say they are for and will help the West weaken the multi-national people of the Russian Federation.
    This is a remarkably blunt assessment of Russian nationalist attacks on immigrants and indicates that there are at least some among the Eurasianists who are often mistakenly lumped together with the nationalists who are worried about what the current wave of migrantophobia may lead to in their country.