They receive nightly calls from secret service employees, are threatened, intimidated, and often arrested. Russian journalists who dare to publicly call the war against Ukraine a war not only face heavy fines. They experienced a “real hounding,” reported the managing director of the organization Reporters Without Borders, Christian Mihr. According to representatives of the national media, the local media are now being systematically harassed. The federal government wants to help, after Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD), Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth also put pressure on Thursday.
“The Putin regime is currently using draconian measures to transform Russia into a flawless dictatorship, also to do everything possible to prevent the truth about the atrocities and atrocities of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from coming to light,” said the Greens politician Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Right now it is important that we support the voices from the media and culture who have defended the last freedoms in Russia, who have tried to report truthfully or who have raised their voices against this war of aggression.”
Earlier on Thursday, Interior Minister Faeser announced that she wanted to better protect people from Russia who were politically persecuted in Germany. “People who reject Putin’s criminal war and flee Russia to protect themselves from repression should be safe in Germany,” she said on Twitter. “We have to find ways so that people from Russia who are specifically threatened can apply for asylum in the EU and also work.” While refugees from Ukraine are automatically allowed to stay in Germany for up to three years and work immediately as part of an EU crisis directive for war refugees, stricter regulations apply to those who have fled from Russia.
Russians need a Schengen visa to enter Germany
Russians who want to go to Germany must apply for a so-called Schengen visa before entering Germany. It allows them entry, but only a 90-day stay – and no work in the Federal Republic. Even those who receive asylum because of political persecution, like all other asylum seekers, are not allowed to earn their own money for a long time. Both options are problematic for Russian journalists, company employees or cultural workers. Firstly, there is no end in sight to the war, and secondly, the vast majority want and have to work.
Ever since Russian troops attacked Ukraine and there has been a wave of arrests of citizens critical of the government in Russia, the German embassy in Moscow has been confronted with a flood of exit requests. The number of employees of Western companies who would rather leave the country today than tomorrow and ask for visas for Germany is said to be in the mid four-digit range. In addition, there are critical artists, intellectuals, deserters and other critics of Putin who face long prison sentences.
Leading politicians in the traffic light coalition assume that more and more soldiers, police officers and government employees could flee. “We have to be prepared for the fact that members of the Russian security apparatus and the Russian armed forces want to leave their country,” says Konstantin Kuhle, deputy FDP parliamentary group leader, the SZ. “As the war progresses, more and more Russian soldiers will realize the futility of aggressive war.” A push is therefore necessary to grant them uncomplicated protection in the European Union, according to Kuhle. “That would reward the deserters’ courage and help further weaken the Russian army’s clout,” says Johannes Vogel, first parliamentary secretary of the FDP parliamentary group.
In principle, the federal government has long been in agreement
The federal government has been reassuring for weeks that they want to and will quickly help those who are politically persecuted and threatened in Russia. But things drag on. Actually, according to the will of the federal government, threatened Russian citizens should be issued with a so-called D visa instead of a so-called C visa, which allows them to stay longer. In principle, the federal government had long agreed that they wanted to help, it said on Thursday.
However, the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of the Interior have not yet been able to agree on a common line. On the one hand there are security concerns, apparently also from the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Because extremists could mingle with the politically persecuted and deserters from Russia – or Putin supporters could be deliberately smuggled in this way. Clear specifications for the German embassy in Moscow are still missing. In addition, their employees are threatened with expulsion in the near future. Then the visa issuance, which is already faltering, would come to a complete standstill or would have to be relocated to neighboring countries such as Georgia.