War in Ukraine is evolving into a humanitarian disaster right at the European Union’s doorstep. In contrast to wars elsewhere in world, European Union member states are the first safe countries that can be reached by people fleeing direct warfare.

After a failed blitzkrieg, the Russian army has adopted attacks against civilians, resulting in ever-growing refugee flows from Ukraine to neighbouring countries — 3.5 million people have fled so far, mainly women and children.

The influx is expected to grow, putting the stability of the European Union at risk and creating an opportunity for Vladimir Putin, a master of information wars against open societies, to create dangerous divisions in the EU.

Humanitarian crisis as a cyber-weapon

Massive migration flows have frequently caused security concerns in post-1989 Europe. The influx of nearly a million asylum-seekers to Germany from the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia resulted in restrictive asylum policies and border controls.

But it was the Syrian crisis, skilfully used by both by Russian media and Russian troll farms on social media, that transformed the humanitarian crisis into a cyberweapon.

That weapon had quick success on three fronts: the unprecedented rise of right-wing, populist anti-Muslim and anti-immigration movements across the EU; Brexit; and a rise in anti-immigration sentiment in eastern Europe.

Eastern Europe’s immigration ambivalence

The EU does not have a common immigration policy, with a few exceptions: border control, visa policy, asylum policy and legal migration policy for a few specific categories like students and long-term permanent residents.

Access to the EU is defined by a dense network of agreements, from visa waivers to trade agreements, with citizenship the key to determining someone’s right of entry.

In the early 1990s, some former communist countries started adopting EU rules in a process called “Europeanization” to meet the criteria for EU membership.

Read more at The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/how-russia-is-trying-to-stoke-anti-ukrainian-sentiment-in-eastern-eu-countries-178816

Image courtesy: People who fled the war in Ukraine rest inside an indoor gymnasium being used as a refugee centre in the village of Medyka, a border crossing between Poland and Ukraine, on March 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris