Dissidents from “neoliberal” states can now petition Moscow for residency
FILE PHOTO: ACLU march participants during the LA Pride Parade in Hollywood, June 11, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. © Mario Tama / Getty Images
Moscow has listed 47 countries whose “destructive attitudes” contradict Russian values, opening the path to their nationals to seek asylum in Russia if they so choose.
President Vladimir Putin signed a decree last month allowing foreigners who share Russia’s traditional values and disagree with the “neoliberal” agenda pushed by their own governments to apply for residency.
On Friday, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin published the list of countries and territories that “implement policies that impose destructive neoliberal ideological attitudes contradicting traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”
The list posted on the Russian government portal includes the following countries and territories: Australia, Austria, Albania, Andorra, the Bahamas, Belgium, Bulgaria, the UK, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Micronesia, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Romania, San Marino, North Macedonia, Singapore, the US, Taiwan (territory of China), Ukraine, Finland, France, Croatia, Montenegro, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, Estonia and Japan.
Notably absent from the list are EU and NATO members Slovakia and Hungary, as well as NATO member Türkiye.
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Most of the designated countries previously made the register of “unfriendly” governments, first compiled in the spring of 2021 and updated in 2022. The states on that blacklist are subject to Russian diplomatic and economic countermeasures based on their hostile conduct.
Russia can “offer the world a safe haven for normalcy” by defending traditional values from the “wokeism catastrophe” that has come to dominate the collective West, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said on Thursday at the Fourth Eurasian Women’s Forum in St. Petersburg.
According to Putin’s edict from August, nationals of “destructive neoliberal” countries are eligible to seek temporary residence in Russia without having to satisfy the standard immigration requirements, such as national quotas, Russian language proficiency, and knowledge of Russian history and laws.
The plan appears to have originated at a February symposium in Moscow, when Italian student Irene Cecchini presented the idea of “impatriation” to the Russian president. Cecchini urged Putin to streamline the immigration and naturalization process for foreigners who shared the “cultural, traditional and family values” of Russia, presenting it as a way to help the country overcome a demographic dip.
