Gimme Shelter

Should Russia’s neighbors accept fleeing conscripts?

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We begin with two scenes from Russia’s new mobilization, which was expected to be a bureaucratic shambles yet has still somehow underperformed expectations. The first plays like dark comedy.

https://twitter.com/epi_ona/status/1574697478695305223

 

The second is tragedy.

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  1. Mary Stine

    How many of those fleeing Russians actually have family in Ukraine? How many are devout Orthodox Christians who are appalled by this war against the birthplace of Eastern Orthodoxy? How many are good students of history or just remember their grandfather and great-grandfathers' tales of WWII??
    How many believe their leader is descending into madness and trying to take his citizens with him into hell?? I do not know, but I sure as hell don't want to presume that none of the Russians attempting to flee might not have those reasons.

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  2. genesis

    The problem may solve itself soon. Comrade Putin is facing a delima too: to shut the border, or not to shut the border? and it's more urgent for him than for his neighbors, I think.

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    Theirn Scott

    Excellent explanation of the dilemma. Thanks.

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  4. Natty Bumpo

    I had been thinking about this question and came down on the side of accepting these people in the west. However, we cannot expect Poland and the Baltic countries to accept any of them except briefly in transit (maybe not even then). Some of the Baltic countries have large Russian speaking communities left from Russian resettlement during the USSR Era. In some cases, these existing Russian speaking citizens still identify with Russia and they may end up being a security risk. Estonia ha a very small population and not much room for a lot of immigrants, especially from Russia.

    Taking these people off the board is on balance a good idea, and they may be OK if good places can be found for them.

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    CynthiaW

    Very informative.

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    Robert Knudson

    Excellent analysis - I would note that one additional argument against admitting refugees is the ability it provides Russia to infiltrate agents into NATO countries.

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  7. David Rice

    Good column building out the pros and cons.

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  8. Gritgrim

    Sorry for hogging the bandwidth here, but the topic is literally close to heart to me. A couple of points more.

    A. The practical political situation in northern Europe is moot. Finnish PM has already told that Finland will follow Estonia and will basically shut the border. Doing otherwise is not possible, if you see the mood of the population here. Russians blowing up their gas pipes didn’t help the mood (and nobody here seriously thinks there could be another culprit). So we will not be accepting draft dodgers as refugees.

    B. Most Russians saw the writing on the wall and did not try to flee here, but to Georgia and Kazakhstan. In particularly Georgia is in a very difficult situation. Their population is some 3.5 million and they have a huge number of both Ukrainian and Russian refugees. Some say up to a million. This has meant among other things skyrocketing costs and the Georgians are not happy about it. Mixing large numbers of Ukrainians and Russians causes all the expected problems. It is a powder keg.

    C. Russia is now conscripting would-be draft dodgers at the borders and is likely to shut down its borders anyway. It is interesting though why they didn’t do so before announcing the mobilisation (what Ukraine did and any other country trying to seriously mobilise would do). They did that for a reason. It would be interesting to know what that reason was.

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    Alina M.

    "They’re not seeking asylum because they oppose the war, they’re seeking asylum because they oppose having to risk their lives to wage it". This is exactly right. Most Russians either don't care what happens to Ukraine or they support putin, but they want to destroy Ukraine without their personal involvement. Even Russian "opposition" is ineffective and disorganized, which is the reason their country is the hellhole it is. Knowing Russians, I'd say that if European countries let them in, they'll have a BIG problem on their hands, not only because it'll give putin or his successor a reason to invade those countries for any manufactured grievance but also because Russians tend to behave as if everybody "owes" them a certain quality of life and they are intolerant of other nations and ethnicities. Their appalling behavior toward Ukrainian refugees in several European counties, even by those Russians who supposedly left Russia years ago, confirms this.

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    Mike B

    I tend to agree with your gut feeling.
    One factor that you didn't mention was security concerns - what proportion of "fleeing" Russians might be spies or sleepers?

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    1. Gritgrim

      A good point. Russia is used to moving its troops and agents around Europe as tourists. This is how the wagner group is often transported and we all know about how interesting the Salisbury cathedral clock is for military age Russian men. Estonia’s standing army has less than 10000 troops. A battalion of wagnerites in our rear is something we already wargame constantly and this would make placing that battalion there much easier.

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Nick Catoggio is a staff writer for The Dispatch and writes the newsletter Boiling Frogs. He previously blogged as Allahpundit for Hot Air. ⁣  ⁣  Subscribe to Boiling Frogs here »
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