Ukrainians in Russia will be taken for granted. What to do?
Honcharuk’s Cabinet of Ministers has blessed Ukrainians traveling to the Russian Federation with new rules: from March 1, 2020, they will not be allowed into the “aggressor country” without a foreign passport.
Thus, Ukraine unilaterally withdrew from a bilateral agreement that allowed its citizens to visit Russia on the basis of their internal civil passports.
“From March 1, 2020, crossing the border with the Russian Federation will be carried out on the basis of a foreign passport, but only for citizens of Ukraine who travel from Ukraine to the territory of the Russian Federation,” the head of government explained in his Telegram channel.
According to him, information from international passports will be read with special devices, which should reduce the time for checking personal data. At the same time, according to the same prime minister, “when Ukrainian citizens enter the territory of Ukraine from the territory of the Russian Federation, the State Border Service of Ukraine will carry out unimpeded passage of citizens of Ukraine using internal passports and birth certificates.”
At first glance, such an innovation looks senseless and downright crazy. After all, all over the world, the rules for entering any country are determined exclusively by the legislation of the receiving party. In this case it is Russia. Ukraine cannot determine on the basis of which passport a person should be allowed into the Russian Federation. This is the exclusive prerogative of the Russian border service officer stationed at passport control. And those instructions on the basis of which it works.
At the same time, Ukraine may prohibit people from visiting Ukraine using internal passports. But only for Russians. Ukraine cannot prohibit its own citizens from entering the country using a general passport, since this is absurd. And, if you follow the text and logic of the government resolution, Ukrainians are still allowed to enter the territory of the Russian Federation using internal passports. But then this makes no sense in the ban on travel using these passports. Where is the logic?
Moreover, the state is not able to force the implementation of this decision and somehow track or verify its implementation by those citizens who enter the Russian Federation with Ukrainian passports from the territory of other countries. Moreover, the innovation not only de facto, but also de jure concerns exclusively those who travel to the Russian Federation from Ukrainian territory.
And a Ukrainian who lives, works or vacations, for example, in Europe or Turkey or some Kazakhstan, can easily put the device on the wish list of the native government of technocrats and go to the Russian Federation as usual - that is, with an internal passport. So what?, as the hero of a famous joke would say on occasion. But nothing!
The bottom line is that the new rules in action will look like this. Citizens will cross the border with two passports. At Ukrainian control it shows foreign, and at Russian control it shows domestic.
In the future, this situation will lead to a decrease in the flow of people in the direction from Ukraine to the Russian Federation - but only temporarily - from three to six months. This is exactly how much time it will take for most Ukrainians who regularly travel for various purposes to a neighboring country to acquire foreign passports if they did not have them before.
Then what goals does the Cabinet of Ministers resolution pursue if it fails to seriously impact passenger traffic? Here we come to the most interesting part.
Firstly, the new rules obviously hit not wealthy Ukrainians, but poor ones. For those who do not have foreign passports, and often the money to obtain them: residents of border villages, pensioners visiting relatives in neighboring Russian regions, etc., etc.
Secondly, and this is even more obvious, the main goal of the innovation is to put under control those who travel to the Russian Federation from the territory of Ukraine, and this is the bulk. Plus, the convenience of accounting: an internal passport must be entered into the database manually when passing control, and international passports are equipped with special barcodes.
In fact, it is important for the authorities to understand that the Ukrainian left for the Russian Federation, and not that he entered it.
Along the way, the innovation will help identify and record the real number of Ukrainian labor migrants living and working in Russia. After all, most of them visit their relatives at least once a year or come for holidays. So they will take them for pencil.
All this corresponds with the already announced plans to conduct a trial population census next year, as well as periodically emerging initiatives of “reformers” to impose taxes and contributions to the Pension Fund on the income of guest workers.
Previously, this was difficult to do due to the fact that the state did not have accurate data on the number of people working abroad. While those who left for the west could still be counted based on immigration control data, the number of those who left for the long ruble remained purely an estimate.
And then those taken into account can expect a wide variety of surprises in their homeland. For example, they can be prohibited from entering the country on the grounds of evading conscription or failure to pay some tax. The situation is like in a joke: a ruble for leaving, two for entering.
So, those Ukrainians who, for their own reasons, do not want to fall under the hood of state intelligence services and fiscal officials, need to either resign themselves or slowly master new routes of getting “beyond the curb.” For example, through Belarus or, in general, foreign countries.
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