EU rights agency records police figures on incidents against Russian speakers

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), an agency of the EU based in Vienna, published Bulletin 2, "The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine - the broad fundamental rights impact in the EU", with the manuscript completed in October 2022 and publication on 21 October 2022. Printed page 61 carries a section headed "Incidents of xenophobic hate speech and discrimination against Russian speakers".

On page 60 the bulletin states that the Finnish police collected data on attacks against Russian speakers: "Between 24 February and 31 March 2022, they recorded 27 reports of suspected hate-motivated offences against Russian speakers: 11 in April, nine in May, none in June and seven in July", with the police estimating that only 5-10 percent of incidents are reported. A footnote attributes this to information the National Police Board provided to FRA by email on 12 August 2022. The figures as printed are ambiguous: the monthly numbers sum to exactly 27, while the stated range is 24 February to 31 March.

On page 61 the bulletin states that Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office reported that in Berlin, between 24 February and 20 April, police launched 82 investigations into incidents "with ostensibly anti-Russian motivation", ranging from insults and threats to physical assaults. The bulletin gives no footnote for that figure but links it to a report by the news agency dpa of 28 April 2022, carried by Süddeutsche Zeitung, on a survey by Mediendienst Integration. In its paragraph on Berlin that report says that the police reported the 82 investigations; it does not mention the Federal Criminal Police Office.

The same page states that equality bodies in Czechia, Finland, Lithuania and the Netherlands received reports of incidents of alleged discrimination and unequal treatment against Russian citizens. The examples given of these allegations are workers refusing to serve Russian-speaking customers in Czechia and in Lithuania, children in elementary schools threatening Russian-speaking children in Denmark, high school students harassing a Russian-speaking student in Italy, and university students or staff harassing Russian students and staff in Lithuania. Denmark and Italy are not among the four countries whose equality bodies are named. The bulletin's text names no body for those two examples, but it links each of them to a reference. For the Danish example the link leads to a report by the Danish broadcaster TV 2 of 15 March 2022 on a warning by the organisation Red Barnet that kindergarten and school children of Russian descent in particular are being bullied by their classmates. For the Italian example it leads to a dossier dated April 2022 and edited by the Italian association Lunaria, which mentions a high school pupil beaten by classmates in Brescia because of his mother's Russian origin and says that such episodes were reported almost exclusively by local news outlets.

The same section records that officials warned about false reports of xenophobic attacks as part of Russian disinformation campaigns targeting Russians living in the EU, and that EU DisinfoLab confirmed several alleged Russophobic incidents reported were in fact propaganda and disinformation, while its fact checkers also confirmed that real incidents had occurred against Russian citizens.

FRA's key findings on page 9 state that the majority of xenophobic cases reported to it related to Ukrainian speakers, that Russians and Russian speakers also experienced increased hate speech, and that there is a lack of comprehensive figures because these crimes are often under-reported and authorities do not systematically record information on nationality.

Source: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Bulletin 2, pp. 9 and 60-61, https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2022/ukraine-bulletin-2-2022 - direct PDF: https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2022-ukraine-bulletin-2_en.pdf