“If I speak badly about my country, I will have problems there, but if I say something good about Russia, I will have problems here.” This anonymous testimony, collected by Politico from a Russian student in the UK sums up well the paradoxical situation in which many of his young expatriate compatriots find themselves.
According to the European news site, every year 48,000 Russians go to study abroad. A large number of them go to Europe, but given the current geopolitical situation, some, like the person interviewed, prefer “do not mention my nationality”.
“Some students report an increasing level of Russophobia,” assures the media, which relays several stories that confirm this feeling.
Also in the United Kingdom, for example, Politico tells the story of Elena Ledneva, a 33-year-old Russian who moved to London last year and applied to a London university for a master’s degree. “She was not accepted, and she was told that this decision was taken ‘in response to recent events and the situation in Ukraine’”, explains the news site. The university in question speaks of an e-mail “sent by mistake” and one “poor internal communication”.
In the case of the University of Tartu, in Estonia, this decision not to admit applications from Russian students was even assumed explicitly. Indeed, the vice-rector insisted on defending this choice, putting forward the argument of solidarity with Ukraine, but also that of internal security.
Because of their history, countries in eastern Europe are more likely to experience some form of aversion towards Russian citizens, and this is what happened in Poznań, in the west of Poland. In the university of this city, a Russian student claims to have heard a professor declare that Russophobia was “the best answer” at war.
“Convince young Russians to return home”
Should we deduce from this that these cases of discrimination on grounds of nationality are very widespread in Europe?
To this question, Michael Gaebel, director of the Association of European Universities, answers with a very clear “no”. Nevertheless, even these rather isolated episodes are to be strongly condemned, especially since they constitute an important tool for the Kremlin “who seizes on these accusations of discrimination to instil fear in Russian students and convince them to return home”.
“At the end of February, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova claimed, without giving evidence, that Russian students were being expelled from European universities, remind about this Politico. The Minister of Education in Moscow then announced that these disenfranchised students, if they returned, could automatically enter the most important universities in Russia.”
A strategy of the Kremlin to bring these young people back within its borders, and thus prevent the risk of a “Westernization” of part of the future elite of the country.