After the start of the active phase of the war in Ukraine, Russians living in the Czech Republic and other European countries have increasingly been asked to share their position on the events taking place. Sometimes this reaches a completely perverted logic: anyone who, for some reason, does not publicly express this position will certainly be recorded as approving of the war and supporting Russia’s actions.
The reality is completely different: the overwhelming majority of Russians living in the Czech Republic are quite oppositional, oppose the war and are critical of the Russian authorities. It is enough to remember that Putin suffered a crushing defeat in the elections at a polling station in Prague. Even according to official data from the Russian Central Election Commission, he received less than 15% of the votes. According to the results of independent exit polls, only about 4%. This is one of the lowest figures in the entire world.
Why then don’t Russians in the Czech Republic talk about this on every corner? The whole point is that Russians are not safe even when living in Europe. If a Russian is against the war, does not support the actions of the Russian politics, has a good attitude to Ukrainians and shares European and democratic values, then them and their family are in a very vulnerable position.
Quite often you can hear “But you are not in Russia anymore, nothing threatens you here!” Unfortunately, this is a very common myth, and it also has little to do with reality.
And it is not at all about the need to occasionally travel to Russia and parents left behind there. And it is not at all because of concerns about property left behind there, no. The reality is that even those people who have nothing to do with Russia except their place of birth and passport are in danger. And what is much worse is that the mechanisms of the Czech Republic and the EU that are supposed to protect people from political persecution from their homeland practically do not work.
Repressions on the scale of Stalin’s times
According to UN human rights experts, since the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, repression in Russia has increased and reached the level of Stalin’s times . New articles with a very broad interpretation have been added to the Russian Criminal Code. According to the human rights organization Memorial (banned in Russia), there are currently more than 1,100 political prisoners in Russian prisons. More than 10,000 criminal cases of refusal to perform military service have been pending since the beginning of the military conflict in Ukraine, as Mediazona writes. According to Radio Liberty, more than 20,000 Russians have been detained in Russia during protests against the war in Ukraine.
Let’s figure out what a Russian citizen faces for disagreeing with the current government’s agenda? For example, the article “for discrediting the army”, which Russian courts understand as anything. Even the simple phrase “No to war!”, and simply calling a war “war” (because according to the official position of the Russian authorities, this is not a war, but a “special military operation”). Punishment – a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles (~3 thousand euros) or imprisonment for up to 3 years.
The article about “spreading fakes” is even worse. The Russian authorities consider any facts that they officially deny to be “fakes”, and, accordingly, for any messages telling about events that the Russian authorities are trying to hush up or present in a different light. For this, a fine of up to 1.5 million rubles (~15 thousand euros) or a prison term of up to 10 years is threatened. An example is the case of Alexandra Skochilenko .
And for public discussions about whether a particular territory should not be part of the borders of the Russian Federation, you can get a fine of up to 100 thousand rubles or a prison term of up to 5 years.
Also, the Russian authorities often punish those who speak out against the war with the article on “justification of terrorism” with a fine of up to 1 million rubles or a prison term of up to 5 years.
In short, absolutely everyone who is not indifferent to what is happening in Ukraine now easily has a “skeleton in the closet” suitable for Russian courts.
Here it can be added that one can become a criminal offender from the point of view of the Russian authorities for much less. For example, after the flood in Jeseník last year, many Czech residents wanted to help the victims and transferred money to charitable foundations. The largest of such Czech foundations, Človek v tisni, is recognized in Russia as an “undesirable organization,” and therefore, if the fact of transferring funds to it becomes known to the Russian authorities, the person faces a prison term of up to five years.
How does this relate to Russians living abroad? Very directly.
For a long time now, Russian authorities have been initiating administrative and criminal cases under repressive “political” articles even against those who have left and live in other countries.
For example, not long ago, a Prague resident who spoke out against the war on Facebook and also spoke at an anti-war rally in Prague in March 2022, found out that he was put on the federal wanted list in Russia, although he had not been to Russia for many years and does not conduct any activities there. Apparently, the criminal case against him was initiated based on a denunciation by a pro-Putin activist from Rostov, who specifically sought out posts from anti-war Russians on social networks and reported them to Russian law enforcement agencies. This is far from an isolated case.
“But you can simply not pay the fine, and you won’t be sent to prison in the Czech Republic?” the reader will ask. This is, of course, true, but in reality everything is much more complicated. And the matter here is in European and Czech legislation.
Burn your passport
The problem is that by law, foreigners are required to have a passport to stay in the Czech Republic and the EU. That same red Russian passport, because Russians who only have Russian citizenship simply do not have any other passports (and they were recently banned from obtaining Czech citizenship by adding Lex Ukrajina to the law).
Initiation of a criminal case in Russia automatically means the imposition of restrictions on travel, which entails the impossibility of obtaining a new passport at the Russian consulate in the event of damage, loss or expiration. It is reasonable for people who are wanted not to appear on the territory of the Russian embassy at all.
It is practically impossible to prove one’s innocence in such a political criminal case, even with the help of attorneys by power of attorney – according to official data, the share of acquittals in Russian courts is less than 1%.
Those who were given huge fines for their position are no better off – under Russian law, failure to pay a fine of more than 10 thousand rubles (2,500 Czech crowns) also entails a restriction on travelling, which entails the impossibility of obtaining a new foreign passport. To get rid of this restriction, it is necessary to pay the fines (recall that the amount of one fine can reach 400 thousand rubles ~ 4 thousands euros). But then the Russian finds himself in a situation in which he is forced to become a sponsor of the budget of the Russian state, which is unacceptable for opponents of the war and the Russian regime. And at the same time, the Russian receives reproaches and condemnation that he is paying Putin for the war. So what is the way out of this situation?
For those who live in the Czech Republic on a temporary residence permit (let us recall that it was possible to move to the Czech Republic from Russia until 2022 inclusive, and for such arrivals, applying for permanent residence will not be possible until 2027), a passport is critically necessary for extending the status and residence cards. If at the time of extending the temporary residence permit a person cannot provide a valid passport, he is given a deadline to provide the missing documents. If the documents are not provided within this period, the person loses the temporary residence permit status and can be deported from the territory of the Czech Republic.
The situation with permanent residence is slightly better, but still far from ideal. Formally, permanent residence status is not tied to having a passport, but a foreigner with permanent residence is still required by law to have one in order to stay in the Czech Republic and the EU. Without a valid passport, it is impossible to obtain a new permanent residence card. If it expires or is lost, a person is left without any documents at all. It is impossible to leave the Czech Republic, it is impossible to get a job, banks close accounts and refuse to open new ones.
But there are also Aliens Passports?
You may have heard about the mechanism for issuing so-called “aliens’ passports,” which in theory exist precisely to solve such problems. Sometimes you can even hear that it is enough to simply contact the Ministry of Interior, prove the fact that you are not given a passport at the consulate, and you will be given a replacement document. Yes, as the law says, an “alien’s passport” can be obtained in the event of “the impossibility of obtaining a passport of your country for reasons beyond your control.”
There is only one problem: for Russians, this mechanism practically does not work.
However, not only for Russians. For example, there are known mass cases of refusals to issue such passports to Belarusians – despite the fact that their state does not officially issue any foreign passports at consulates, returning to their homeland after the 2020 protests for many Belarusians threatens prison terms in inhuman conditions. The situation improved only after the intervention and personal requests of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Of course, no one asked for Russians, so people who faced refusals at consulates are forced to rely only on themselves.
So why does the mechanism of “Aliens’ passports” practically not work?
Let’s start with the fact that it is often quite difficult to prove the very fact of “impossibility” of something. There are known cases when Russian consulates refused to issue a citizen a foreign passport, and at the same time refused to issue any official paper about it (which, in turn, is a violation of Russian law, but who would be surprised by this in our time).
But even with such a paper or any other evidence of refusal, the chances of receiving a alien’s passport are still very small – only a few manage to obtain such a pass, and the rest are ultimately doomed to long and tedious legal proceedings with the Ministry of Interior.
But even with such a paper or any other evidence of refusal, the chances of receiving an alien’s passport are still very small – only a few manage to obtain such a pass, and the rest are ultimately doomed to long and tedious legal proceedings with the Ministry of Interior (a number of which are currently ongoing), a positive outcome of which is not at all guaranteed.
Yes, according to Czech law, a person has the right to apply for such a passport. But receiving such a passport is no longer a legal right. The law does not have clear criteria for what it means to be “unable to obtain a passport of one’s own country for reasons beyond one’s control” — and here everything depends on the decision and mood of a specific official. The experience of real people who tried to obtain such a passport due to the impossibility of obtaining a Russian passport at the consulate suggests that Czech officials often refuse to issue Czech passports to Russians, citing that the applicant “has not used all possible methods of obtaining a passport.” In response, representatives of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic suggest using the services of Russian consulates in other countries or going to Russia and obtaining a passport there — after all, the borders are open and airplanes are flying. And here it should be noted that the decision not to issue a passport to a particular citizen is made not in the consulate itself, but in the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB in Russia, so an appeal to another consulate will not help in any way. And if an anti-war Russian personally goes to the Russian Federation for a passport, then them have every chance of not returning from there – there they may face a prison term (very often criminal cases are initiated at the moment of crossing the border) or mobilization to the war front.
There are a couple of other tricky moments. For example, when applying for Czech citizenship, the offices very often require applicants to provide a certificate from the Russian Federation about the absence of a criminal record, despite the fact that if you have lived in the Czech Republic for more than 10 years, it is not required by law – and it will be impossible to obtain such a certificate with an open criminal case. Also, according to Russian laws, a certificate of the absence of long-term and unpaid fines is required for the process of leaving citizenship. And we know that leaving Russian citizenship, according to the law of Deputy Exner and Minister Rakusan, will be mandatory for obtaining Czech citizenship. That is, those who oppose the war and Putin’s policies will not receive Czech citizenship, because they will not be able to renounce Russian citizenship. It is noteworthy that it is precisely these people that Deputy Exner and Minister Rakusan call people who are worthy of receiving Czech citizenship. To solve this problem, deputy Olga Richterova proposed that instead of the fact of renouncing Russian citizenship, it would be sufficient to file an application to renounce citizenship – precisely so that persons who have fallen out of favor with the Russian authorities would not be dependent on the will of Russian officials.
The authors and initiators of the amendment spoke out against this proposal, de facto deciding that the decision on whether a particular person will receive citizenship of the Czech Republic will depend on the consent of the Russian authorities.
In addition, we should not forget about a much more serious problem. Having a valid passport will not help in any way if it comes to deportation from the Czech Republic for any reason. This was directly stated on his Facebook page by the author of the attachment to the law Lex Ukrajina 7, MP Martin Exner. The main goal of the amendment prohibiting Russians from obtaining Czech citizenship is to have the opportunity to deport holders of Czech permanent residence to Russia “in the event of an escalation of the conflict”. It probably does not need to be explained what consequences they may face there after anti-war and anti-Putin statements.
There is no point in hoping for political asylum
“But there is a mechanism for granting political asylum (azyl) precisely for such cases!” the reader will say, and formally he will be right. The reality, unfortunately, is that with asylum everything is much worse than with the aliens’ passports.
And it’s not even that Czech laws directly state that people who already have rights in the country similar to those of people with citizenship cannot apply for asylum– and as lawyers say, permanent residence status also applies here, so you will have to suspend your permanent residence, and in some cases there is a risk of losing this status altogether.
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And it’s not even that applying for asylum carries a huge number of restrictions compared to permanent residence. For example, a person who applied for asylum does not have the right to work for the first six months after that .
That is, instead of working for the benefit of the Czech Republic, paying taxes and renting housing, a person will be forced to live for six months on social benefits from Czech taxpayers.
But the problem is much more serious. The main problem is that the mechanism of asylum, which was established in the middle of the last century, unfortunately works very poorly against the repressions of modern authoritarian regimes like the Russian one.
In order to have grounds for receiving asylum, it is necessary to prove that a person is in danger in his home country. Such evidence usually includes threats to life or the initiation of a criminal case. The problem is that very often, when a person is “on the radar” of Russian authorities, a criminal case is not initiated against him immediately, but only at the moment of crossing the border with the Russian Federation. There are many such examples, for example, the recent story of Makar Nikolaev, a student studying at the University of Frankfurt am Main. A criminal case was initiated against him only after he crossed the Russian border, and now he faces up to 7 years in prison for his comments on social networks.
Thus, until the moment of crossing the border, the person has no confirmed evidence of the need for protection . From the point of view of the Czech authorities, he can very well go to Russia to get a new passport, pay fines and obtain various certificates. In case of problems with the extension of the residence permit, no one will stand up for him. The fact that by his statements against the war and Russian policy in the public arena or by donations to charitable organizations considered “undesirable” by Russia, the person has already violated a number of articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, is insufficient to provide protection.
There are known cases when asylum was denied to people who actively participated in the activities of anti-war organizations in the Czech Republic and against whom cases had previously been opened in Russia – as it turned out, Czech officials do not care about such trifles, as well as the fates of such people.
Deputy Exner and Minister Rakusan claim that the Czech Republic is making concessions to Russians who share European and democratic values, and even provides them with exceptions in the new law prohibiting Russians from receiving Czech citizenship. Given all of the above, such statements sound like a mockery. Because when applying for asylum, in the event of a refusal, a person who may be in danger in his homeland for his position will not only not receive citizenship, but may also be deported from the Czech Republic back to Russia.
Initially, when we started working on this material, we thought that cases of non-issuance of passports in consulates, non-issuance of aliens’ passports in Ministry of Interior and refusals of asylum even to those who are obviously in danger in their homeland are isolated. However, in the process of collecting materials for the article and talking to people who found themselves in similar situations, it turned out that this phenomenon is much more widespread than one might think. Unfortunately, many of the involuntary participants in these events do not want publicity, fearing for the consequences and outcome of further legal proceedings with the Czech Ministry of Interior, as well as for various other reasons. In the future, we will try to prepare and publish individual materials with the most characteristic and complex stories, if we manage to get permission from their participants.
So what next?
So here we have a classic Catch-22 – a situation with obviously impossible conditions.
Russians in the Czech Republic are being asked to speak out against the war and the actions of the Russian regime, but in fact are not being given any protection from the consequences of such statements by their country of citizenship.
Of course, this problem could be solved. For example, revise the laws on asylum so that not only events that have already happened are taken into account, but also potential danger to a person. Taking into account the current practice of Russian authorities to initiate criminal cases only after crossing the border. Or at least make it so that applying for asylum with a subsequent refusal does not cancel the permanent residence. It would be right to change the legislation regarding aliens’ passports. So that obtaining such a pass is not an opportunity, but a legal right, and there is a clear list of situations with clear criteria when the Ministry of Internal Affairs would be obliged to issue such a passport to the applicant.
However, as we see, the Czech authorities are not only not interested in protecting anti-war and anti-Putin Russians, but on the contrary, they are adopting laws that make the situation of such people as worse as possible. Many of them would like to receive Czech citizenship not only because of their love for the Czech Republic and their desire to continue living and working for the benefit of the country, but also in order to no longer depend on Russian citizenship with all the problems described above. To be able to say what they think without fearing the consequences for themselves and their families from the Russian authorities.
But the amendment to the law Lex Ukraine 7 blocked this opportunity for them due to the complete freezing of consideration of applications for citizenship for an indefinite period. And even when the temporary protection regime ceases to be effective and applications are unfrozen, the same requirement to renounce Russian citizenship will continue to be in effect. And the decision on whether to release a specific person from Russian citizenship or not will be made by the Russian authorities. Thus, under the guise of concern for security (and we have already discussed more than once that in fact these measures do not contribute to state security) , Czech deputies, senators and the president adopted an amendment that plays into the hands of the Russian regime.
The inability to say what you think and to express your position is difficult, but not fatal. In non-democratic authoritarian states (which include Russia), people’s appeals to the authorities by definition do not work and are simply ignored. This is how dictatorships work. It is enough to look at the recent examples of Belarus and Iran, or, for example, recall the events in Novocherkassk in the USSR. If even serious mass protests inside the country cannot influence the policies of the authorities in authoritarian regimes, then there is no point in talking about the voices of a small group of Russians living abroad.
So let’s be honest with ourselves: online statements from immigrants will not destroy the authoritarian regime, will not stop the war, will not help those who suffered from the war, lost their home and their relatives
Therefore, those Russians who live in the Czech Republic and do not have the opportunity to speak out prefer not to speak, but to do.
Many Russians in the Czech Republic worked as volunteers in the first months of the war, meeting refugees at train stations, providing them with housing, and acting as translators in government agencies. Many Russians in the Czech Republic donate money to various charities or directly to those in need.
Naturally, for the reasons described above, they do not talk about it publicly. After all, this is exactly the case when actions are much more important than words.
But if you still want to know the position of a specific Russian in the Czech Republic regarding the war and the policy of the Russian government, ask him about it personally in a confidential setting. And you will find out how things really are.