War and Migration: Refugees as leverage – and weapons?

NATO has recently included migration and flight in hybrid warfare. Given the destroyed infrastructure and attacks on civilians, what role does the factor play in the war in Ukraine?

After the Russian attack on Ukraine, a million people fled to the EU within the first week. As early as February 28, 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, no longer spoke of waves of refugees, but of an “exodus” in view of the historically large number of refugees.

At that time, Viktoria Zinchenka’s family was still wandering through Ukrainian cellars. Her house in Chernihiv had been bombed; it would be weeks before they would make it into the EU. When the family finally arrived at the Polish border in May, millions more people in the EU sought protection with them. Was that factored in by the Russian side, part of the attack strategy?

The head of the migration program of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), Victoria Rietig, recognizes a pattern: “A big difference between wars in the past and wars today is that wars in the past mainly produced deaths and wars today primarily produce displaced persons.”

An effective means of pressure

American political scientist Kelly Greenhill has studied wars and conflicts since 1951. “To put it bluntly, using migration as a weapon doesn’t just happen in times of war. It’s also done very regularly in times of peace,” she says. “Unfortunately, one can say with certainty that at any time in the world, migrants and refugees are being used as weapons in the service of political or military objectives.”

Based on 50 conflicts examined, Greenhill was able to find out that this remedy is highly effective: “When it is used, it is successful in three out of four cases,” she says. “And those who use it seem to get more or less what they want. In fact, half the time, they get exactly what they wanted to force.” There are clear examples in the present that prove this.

Belarus, Morocco and Turkey

Like the situation on the Belarusian-Polish border in the summer of 2021, when the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko lured people from the Middle East to Minsk – with the promise that they would get to Poland and thus the EU. That was his response to the sanctions that the EU had imposed shortly before because of the apparently rigged elections in Belarus. Poland was under pressure and fended off a number of people at the border. In recent weeks, the number of people from the Middle East and Africa crossing the border into Poland from Belarus has increased again.

In May, Morocco opened its borders to put pressure on Spain: the EU country had previously let an enemy of Morocco into the country for medical treatment. As a result, thousands swam and climbed to the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. In one day, 8000 people made it to the EU.

In March 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened the borders to Greece so that migrants and refugees could set out for Greece in large numbers and uncontrolled.

“Russia creates artificial crises”

Could Russian President Vladimir Putin, by bombing civilian targets in Ukraine, deliberately hope that masses of people will flee to the EU in order to provoke a humanitarian crisis?

It is still too early to answer this, say the researchers Rietig and Greenhill. The EU prevented destabilization and pressure on the borders by deciding to apply the mass influx directive at the beginning of March, thus offering Ukrainian citizens temporary protection. It was “a wonderful thing,” says Greenhill. “If Putin really tried to use Ukrainian refugees to put pressure on the EU – that was a brilliant reaction.”

The Ukrainian government believes that Russia is using this leverage. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhailo Podoliak speaks of panicked waves of migration to Europe that triggered the Russian attacks. “Both the tactics and the strategy of the Russian Federation have not changed for twenty to thirty years. Russia creates certain artificial crises, including the migration crises, which are then intended to provoke society’s pressure on the governments in the respective European country.” That is why the Russian military is attacking civilian targets in Ukraine: apartment blocks, medical facilities and schools.

Escape in winter as a Russian weapon?

Putin has not explicitly threatened the EU with refugees. One WDR-An inquiry to the Russian government as to whether the mass exodus from Ukraine that had been triggered by the Russian side was deliberately used remained unanswered.

Migration researcher Gerald Knaus believes that Putin is testing Europe and its values. “So far we have not only survived this test, I think we have mastered it brilliantly – as far as the refugees are concerned,” he says. “But the really difficult round will come in winter.”

It is already clear that displacement, flight and migration within the EU are perceived as a threat by some states, such as Poland and Hungary. The EU could change that. Because last year, when Poland partially turned away people who wanted to ask for protection at the Polish-Belarusian border and instead erected a 187-kilometer fence, the central argument was that this was a hybrid war and Belarus wanted to provoke a migration crisis.

This could become a new standard in the EU: The EU Commission is now working on a directive that could enable every member state to turn people away who ask for protection at the border. And with the reason: These people are a political means of pressure from another state.

Viktoria Zinchenka from Ukraine received protection in Germany. She lives with her little son and her mother on Lake Constance and wants to stay for the time being: the situation in Ukraine is too uncertain for the family. The attacks there have recently increased massively: Time and again it hits the civilian infrastructure, electricity and heat supply – just what people need to survive in winter and what could drive them to flee west.

Whether the expulsion of the civilians then becomes a means of pressure and a weapon also depends on the reaction of the EU.