Putin still hopes to sow division (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
On the evening of 24 August last year, Karin Garretsen and her 10-year-old son rode their bicycles to the sprawling army camp on the outskirts of their village in the Dutch countryside. Some Afghans who had fled the Taliban takeover were due to arrive there, and Garretsen’s son wanted to take their children sweets.
Harskamp is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, a postcard-perfect village of neat houses and tree-lined streets that is home to just over 3,500 people. The idea that the population might increase by 20% overnight came as a shock to some. When the Garretsens neared the Harskamp Barracks, around 250 young local men were burning tyres, hurling fireworks, and howling “Our own people first!” and “Harskamp belongs to us!” Garretsen immediately got her son out of there. “There were fireworks everywhere,” she told me.
Today, on a spring afternoon on the same spot, it is hard to imagine such a scene. The Afghans have left, and the barracks are now home to around 650 people who fled the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On a grassy patch outside the gates, a large Ukrainian flag flies. Refugees cycle past on bikes loaned by locals, giving cheery waves. Volunteers from one of the local churches hand out Dutch syrup waffles to children. A short walk away, Garretsen shows me a clothing bank, brimming with items donated by Harskamp residents.
Harskamp is representative of a wider contradiction in Europe’s treatment of refugees. In 2015 the arrival of more than one million people (most fleeing the Syrian civil war) saw wealthy European nations descend into panic and bickering. Southern nations accused their Northern counterparts of not doing enough to help. While Germany briefly opened its doors to people fleeing war, Eastern European countries rolled out razor wire at their borders, and since then the EU’s refugee policy has focused on keeping people out.
The arrival of more than six million Ukrainians, however, has been met with an outpouring of goodwill and a spirit of cooperation. For the first time, the EU has activated its Temporary Protection Directive, which means Ukrainians arriving in an EU nation have the right to live, work, attend school, and travel freely to any other EU country. There has been very little resistance: even the anti-immigrant populist parties who saw their support surge after the 2015 crisis have been broadly supportive.
The contrast between the warm welcome offered to the largely white, Christian Ukrainians compared to the more hostile reception for people from other cultures and religions has raised valid questions about racism and prejudice. Still, in Harskamp, the new spirit of tolerance appears to extend to everyone. Those I spoke to were embarrassed about the events of eight months ago. “The people here demonstrated and that’s not good,” says 29-year-old Bas Sturm, a deliveryman who organises football games between people living at the barracks and the villagers. They are determined to get it right this time.
You forgot to mention that most Afghan refugees were young men while most Ukrainian refugees are women and children. That is hardly a detail.
I suppose the taking in of millions of refugees could conceivably strengthen Europe in the future, as you suggest, but how does this weaken Russia?
How many women’s teams played in Bas Sturm’s community football matches with Afghan refugees ?
The managerial class in western Europe use the Ukrainian refugees and the refugees from Ukraine to promote their policy of multiculturalism and open borders.
Putin hasn’t cruelly displaced millions to become refugees, in many cases probably permanently. According to this reframing, he has sent a long term investment to the countries of western Europe. How can the West punish such generosity?
How can anyone know what Putin thinks? One thing is certain: a country should repossess territory that was historically its own. Kaliningrad is historically German. How could Putin possibly object to its return to Germany? It would be another beautiful act of generosity, full of humility. And, who knows, the Russians there might prefer to be a long term investment for Germany and the EU.
“But if countries show that having refugees on European soil – … – is not a worst-case scenario but a perfectly manageable situation, they remove one more weapon from Russia’s arsenal.”
You’ve got us there with your clever Psychology. I was against unlimited migration and refugees picking and choosing their destination, in much the same way as an economic migrant does, but if open borders is sticking it to Putin, then I’m sold.
The phrase about cutting off your nose…comes to mind.
Didn’t the UN announce recently that two million Ukrainian refugees had returned to Ukraine?
“But if countries show that having refugees on European soil – … – is not a worst-case scenario but a perfectly manageable situation, they remove one more weapon from Russia’s arsenal.”
That is true if Putin had intended to browbeat Europe to in turn browbeat the Ukrainian government into caving in to Putin’s demands. Somehow that seems a fanciful reason for Europe to console itself that it is fighting the good fight by rolling out anew, as well as hollering out for, the multicultural society. Because, as you also say, “The relentless Russian targeting of civilian and vital infrastructure in Ukraine – … – seems calculated to make Ukraine uninhabitable, thus forcing an unprecedented number of people out of its borders.” That has been the chief aim, the consequences be damned, of the Russian invasion: to drive away Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians from the east of Ukraine in order to stamp a Russian claim to those vast swathes of territory.
As it turns out, many Russian-speaking Ukrainians, especially the older, must be torn. They don’t want to abandon their homes in the war zone, yet are fearful of heading west, deeper into Ukraine to escape the war on account of their fear of being discovered to be Russian and from the east. And they would not want to flee to Russia either. So perhaps some have decided that they might be not so badly treated by Russian soldiers and will chance remaining in their hometowns.
So perhaps Putin realises that, too.
A lot of conflicts, once they kick off in earnest, take on simple aims. The finessing of strategy goes out the window. The Muslim-minority Rohingya in Burma or Myanmar or whatever it’s called these days, were burnt out of their homes into refugee camps in Bangladesh. Presumably the land they had lived on is seen as rightfully belonging to the ruling majority.
The half-million Yazidis of north-central Iraq were run out of their old lands: but they clamoured to fight back against the violent zealots from safer Kurdish territory. If they were to lose their grip on their old lands, it would have been the end of the Yazidi people (like a diaspora Jewish population before the creation of Israel). A mass swift repatriation outside the region would have been doing the Yazidis’ enemies their bidding, effectively.
And then there was the swift, cynical passage of mainly anti-Assad Syrians and Kurds through the mass of Turkey onto rickety boats to cross over to Europe. It was the emptying of undesirable people from their war-torn lands being fought over by powerful people, rivals, hoping to extend their power and influence.
What those examples show is how utterly futile it is to imagine that the formation of functioning fully-multicultural societies in Europe is going to be an effective riposte to the selfish tyrants outside Europe. If they don’t end up functioning societies, and fear and chaos ensue, with bitter self-recrimination into the bargain, then the tyrants are laughing: they’ll feel unexpectedly extra powerful as well as even self-righteous in their own nationalistic outlooks. If, somehow, Europe comes through it and everyone pulls together, including the newcomers themselves, then that is a greater incentive for tyrants to open more fully their own borders and invite whoever undesirable or surplus to requirements is left to leave.
In other words, whether Europe faces the coming decade with grim determination (and taxes the rich very heavily) to manage roofs over the heads for everybody with adequate kitchens, or not, it’s a win-win situation for hard men leaders outside the civilised West.
Putin may eventually claim that his attack earlier in his invasion directly towards Kiev from the north was to make it seem as if the whole of Ukraine was under threat. (It still is!). And that threat would ensure a greater amount of Ukrainians fleeing overall, especially from the east. As the Kremlin sees it, only good Russians and good people deserve to stay in their future utopia. Those who would acquiesce to them.
On a final note: have the non-Ukrainians who fled Ukraine without their passports? Their countries have embassies in The Netherlands. Well, maybe it’s all hands on deck to show that Putin that Europe CAN do it!
Refugees after WW2 certainly helped to resist the Soviets right up until their fall.
But the only way to bring down Putin, or isolate Russia from the rest of Europe, is to make Ukraine’s army strong enough to take back all of its territory.