“There is this panic because nobody wants to die for the Donbass“, affirmed Thursday September 22, on franceinfo, Sylvie Bermann, former ambassador of France in Russia until 2019 and member of the board of directors of the Jacques Delors Institute, while many Russians leave their country to escape a possible mobilization on the Ukrainian front. According to Sylvie Bermann, “we must welcome“the Russians within the European Union because it”need a form of plurality in Russia.” “If they ever return to their country, they will have been confronted with other types of opinions“, she adds.
franceinfo: Do these departures of Russians, even if it is still difficult to quantify them, surprise you?
Sylvie Berman: No, it’s not very surprising. Until then, the war was not felt in big cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg. This is the reason why Vladimir Putin had not decided before the mobilization. He decided to do so because of military setbacks and because he was internally criticized by the nationalist and radical right wing, including by Kadyrov, who is the head of Chechnya. He blamed her for not being efficient. The choice that is made is a partial mobilization, which will affect 300,000 people, but many others who do not know whether they will be enrolled or not. So there is this panic because nobody wants to die for Donbass.
Could this pose a more or less long-term problem for Vladimir Putin on the domestic level?
Vladimir Putin hates street movements. There were some in 2012, a little bit at the start of the war. But the sanctions are very strict since the demonstrations are prohibited, the term of war also. So it’s quite a deterrent. They had not demonstrated since the beginning of the war. There had been many arrests. There, there were another nearly 1,400 arrests. The demonstrations involved 38 cities. But the truth is that it is still quite a minority. Today, Putin finds himself confronted as much with the nationalist wing as with that of the intellectuals or the urban classes who do not want to go and die in the Donbass.
In your opinion, should visas be granted to Russians fleeing their country? Germany, on the one hand, said it was ready to receive them. The Czech Republic but also Poland are opposed to it.
These are countries in which there is always hostility to the Russians. I think we have to welcome them, of course. There needs to be a form of plurality in Russia. And these Russians, if they one day return to their country, if the situation one day improves, will have been confronted with other types of opinions, will have had dialogues with Western countries. Because right now, Russia is locking itself in and cutting itself off from the West. I don’t think our role is to lock him up even more.