FRA Bulletin 2, completed October 2022, records Finnish and German police figures and equality-body reports of alleged discrimination 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 pages 60-61 carry 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 or underlying reference for that figure.
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, and the bulletin does not say which body supplied those two examples.
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
Sources
Where it stands
The figures and examples here are reports, police investigations and allegations collected by an EU agency, not adjudicated findings of discrimination by any court or tribunal. The contesting element is internal to the source: FRA records both that EU DisinfoLab verified several alleged anti-Russian incidents as propaganda and that real incidents against Russian citizens occurred. The landing page and the full PDF were retrieved on 5 September 2026, both returning HTTP 200, and no correction or corrigendum was found on either. FRA published a later Bulletin 3 in 2023; its text was not read during verification, so no check was made for any later revision of these figures.