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Canada has sanctioned Russia. It has banned Russian flights from entering the country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Ukrainians this week, on their day of independence: “You are not alone. Canadians stand with you.”
Yet Canada has not taken a step that the Ukrainian government is now calling for. It has not closed its borders to Russians — at least not entirely.
Ottawa has issued thousands of visas to citizens of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia since that country’s military invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to figures obtained by the Star.
There have been 3,560 visas issued to Russian citizens between Feb. 24 — the day of the Russian invasion — and June 30. Among them, 130 student permits, 2,377 temporary resident permits and 1,053 work permits.
Temporary resident visas are issued to Russian nationals travelling to Canada for a limited period of time — a broad category that can apply to those visiting family members, those studying at Canadian universities, those coming for business trips, as well as those coming for a simple vacation.
The visa-numbers snapshot comes amid a growing push by the Ukrainian government and eastern European nations to ratchet up pressure on the Putin regime by barring Russian citizens from travelling abroad in any but the most urgent circumstances, such as seeking protection from persecution.
“There are people who really need protection, who are persecuted in Russia, may even be killed, and therefore they should receive help from the civilized world,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this month.
But Zelenskyy said the chance to flee Russia should only be offered to those who fight the regime and put their lives and liberty on the line: “This should not apply to the rest of Russian citizens in Europe (for) tourism, entertainment, business affairs.”
Writing in Politico’s European edition Thursday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged G7 countries (which includes Canada), as well as EU member states, to stop issuing tourist visas to Russians “as a first step, to sober them up.
“Russia won’t change until generations of Russians assume common responsibility and guilt for what their country has done,” he wrote. “They must be deprived of the right to cross international borders until they learn to respect them.”
The head of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Ihor Michalchyshyn, said in an interview that the lobby group would like to see Ottawa declare Russia a “state sponsor of terror” due to its aggression and disregard of the laws of war in Ukraine; expel Russian diplomats from Canada and shut down the Russian Embassy; and ban Russian citizens from entering Canada.
The debate is most heated in Europe, where the Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — are leading the charge to bar Russians from travelling freely on the continent. The three countries share borders with Russia or with Belarus (a key Russian ally), or both, and continue to see large flows of Russian passport holders at their borders, armed with visas issued by one of the 26 countries in Europe’s Schengen Zone.
In some cases, the Russian travellers hold multi-year visas issued prior to the conflict in Ukraine. In other cases, they have tourist visas issued by countries that have continued to process Russian applications despite the war.
However, the behaviour of some Russians while abroad risks wearing out the welcome for all of them.
“In some cases, they are quite aggressive, or aggressively expressing their sympathies and political ideas. It is an issue,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told the Star.
“You can imagine how people feel in the Baltics when it comes to the letter Z (a symbol of support for the Russian military) or other symbols of Russian nationalism.”
Landsbergis said his government has not issued tourist visas to Russians since March. Next week, at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers, he hopes to convince other European governments to follow suit.
He said that Russians come to Europe feeling “free and welcome to express and enjoy the liberties that the visa grants them, like freedom of speech.
“Well, I don’t believe that should be granted,” he said. “(Refusing visa applications) also sends a message to the Russian population that a certain period of self-reflection is needed. It’s not just going away, what their country is still involved in.”
Poland, Czech Republic, Finland and Denmark are among the European nations that have committed to restricting visa access for Russians. British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the BBC that the U.K. could “toughen up conditions” to avoid the prospect of “oligarchs’ wives enjoying themselves in Greece or the south of France, or on superyachts around the world while their army is committing war crimes in Ukraine.”
But the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said a total ban is the wrong way to go.
“More than 300,000 Russians have (fled) their country because they don’t want to live under the rule of Putin,” he said, according to Politico. “Are we going to close the door to these Russians? I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
The Russian Anti-War Committee, a group of mostly exiled Russian politicians, journalists, academics, activists and entrepreneurs that supports Russian citizens who have fled their country, said the idea of a visa ban would ultimately bolster — not undermine — the Kremlin’s power.
And the Center for European Policy Alternatives, a Washington-based think tank, wrote in an analysis that the impact would be limited at best because three-quarters of Russians have never travelled abroad, and those who would be trapped in Russia risk might end up supporting Putin’s regime.
“We should see the Russian diaspora as a resource, as the seedlings of a new and open democracy rather than as a threat or as an extension of Putin,” wrote CEPA analyst Kseniya Kirilova. “Why lose their knowledge, talents and experience?”
In a written response to Star questions, a spokesperson for Canada’s Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said that the federal government has enacted sanctions, closed Canadian airspace to Russian aircraft and banned Russian-owned-and-registered ships and fishing vessels from Canadian ports.
“We continue to evaluate all available options to ensure Russia’s actions do not go unpunished,” Aidan Strickland said.
Strickland noted that all temporary residents in Canada must meet a series of requirements before being approved, including demonstrating that they are not a security risk, that they are in good health, that they have the financial means and the firm intention to return home when their stay in Canada ends.
In Canada, there was a post-invasion spike in applications for work permits as well as the number of work permits issued to Russian citizens, according to the statistics, which were provided by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the federal department that processes visas requests.
The Star compared the numbers for Feb. 24 to June 30, 2022 to the figures for the same period in 2019 — the year before the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in Canada closing its borders.
In 2022, there were nine times more work permit applications from Russian citizens compared to 2019 — 3,456 versus 364 in 2019. The number of work permits granted quadrupled — 1,053 in 2022 versus 229 in 2019.
But applications by Russian citizens for temporary resident visas dropped by a quarter in 2022 compared to 2019 — from 9,599 before COVID to 7,334. And the number of temporary resident visas actually granted by the federal government dropped by 68 per cent — from 7,413 in 2019 to 2,377 in 2022.
Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer and researcher, examined the figures and commented that given the backlog from the pandemic, the increase in the number of applications made and accepted by the federal government in 2022 is not unusual. What stood out, he wrote, is the “relatively high refusal rate” for Russian citizens.
“But that is explained by local conditions with the probability of not leaving Canada as a justification for refusal.”
Gilles Breton, a former Canadian diplomat who was posted three times to Moscow over his career — the last as deputy head of mission — said a visa ban for Russian citizens would represent a sudden departure from Canada’s long-standing policy of defending the rights of citizens to enter and leave their own country — a protection afforded to Canadian citizens in the Constitution.
In the final years of the Soviet Union, he noted, Canada fought for the rights of Soviet citizens to be reunited with family members abroad, and for Soviet Jews to be able to emigrate.
“If we do that (refuse visas to Russian citizens) we risk hurting people other than the ones we are targeting,” Breton said. “I understand the point of view of the Ukrainians, but it’s not a simple problem.”
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