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Comment by throwaway290 | Hacker News Reader

Is there a similar board open to Russian refugees? Asking seriously, for myself and some friends. I wouldn't mind if priority is given to war refugees from Ukraine, of course.

Edit: refugee (n.) - a person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.

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The word refugee has legal meaning. You cannot be called refugee unless your country is deemed unsafe and you risk your life being in that country. Thus Russians are not refugees but economic migrants.

However, you can get a political asylum if you have a history of opposing Putin and you are not safe in Russia because of that anymore.

No one who called for the government to end the war on social media or IRL is safe. It is black letter of law that it is punishable by imprisonment.

Do you have any examples of someone being imprisoned for this? Or you're just making assumptions? So far all I see is that everyone detained for participation in anti-war protests in Russia were released after questioning and being issued warning.

The existence of the law is not an assumption.

I'm following OVD-info reports: https://reports.ovdinfo.org/no-to-war-en#1 Do you consider it a reputable source? Nothing like you're describing has happened so far.

If you knew you would be reentering your home country as a criminal under a new free speech suppressing law, would you wing it and gamble 15 years of your life or would you hope to get asylum?

Based on what you wrote so far, I am grateful you do not work in asylum application processing.

Well, since it's not like the US where all this information is easily accessible and mostly reliable public record, most of what we have is interviews with people who have been released (and therefore must not have been sentenced to prison), but that still reveals that beatings, threats of rape and murder, and fines even for things which are on paper not illegal (like single-person protests, which are being processed as illegal organized protests because of similar subject matter to each other), are routine.

https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/russia-protesters-arres...

Avoiding being jailed for up to 15 years is economic migration?

Jailed for 15 years, really? It is more like being fined $200: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/15/marina-ovsyann...

$200 for the social media post, she is yet to stand trial for the tv act.

Listen to this and then rethink whether the russian activists feel safe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN1EkA14y6Q

Millions of Ukrainians weren't feeling safe since at least 2014. But it doesn't give grounds for asking for asylum. So to be "afraid to participate in protests because of fear of persecution" is not enough to claim refugee status.

There were hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine in preceding years. Where are you getting your data?

I'm getting my data from Eurostat. There were fewer asylum applications from Ukraine than from Russia. Rejection rates for both countries were very high. And definitely not even close to the number you're suggesting. Especially if we're counting those who've got refugee status and not just applications.

There are, if you count Ukrainian refugees granted temporary asylum in Russia (somewhat ironically).

To elsewhere in the world, not all are legal refugees. De-facto refugees from Ukraine and Russia could leave in preceding years and did so legally. Many would be disinclined to go back since the likelihood of death or imprisonment has risen dramatically. They would be renewing their passports via embassies while working towards obtaining long-term resident status in meantime. The easiest way of obtaining that status may or may not be by asking for asylum, but regardless if you insist that guaranteed by law political persecution is not grounds for becoming a refugee I am not taking that seriously until you provide proof that reality contradicts the dictionary definition of the word.

They would be technically Asylum Seekers but you're wrong that Russia is safe. Plenty of LGBT people or anti-war activists will be granted refuge for instance by European governments.

Any examples when this actually happened?

Are you questioning whether European countries grant asylum/refuge on the basis of sexuality/gender identity, if those are persecuted in applicant's home country? That is indeed a thing, a quick search away to confirm…

Not just any home country. I'm questioning that this ever happened to some person from Russia (except maybe Chechnya). Even so situation with human rights is bad, it is far from Taliban bad.

Have you searched? I just googled up some stories of LGBT refugees from Russia who gained asylum in Germany.

Unless you are a refugee, you can check this:

https://www.udi.no/en/want-to-apply/work-immigration/russian...

I work as a dev consultant in Oslo and I've crossed a handful of russian devs over the last few years. So it is possible for sure - in normal times atleast.

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