The Wrong Lever: Europe, Ukraine, and the Refugee Question

Thursday 13 August 2026, by Adam Novak

EU leaders are moving towards removal of asylum rights for Ukrainian men aged 23-60, to improve conscription and functioning of essential services in the fifth year of Ukraine’s fight against Russian imperialist aggression. The Zelenskiy government asked for this change. But that does not make the policy right.

On 26 June 2026, the European Commission proposed extending the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) to March 2028, while excluding newly arriving Ukrainian men aged 23 to 60. [1] 

The TPD confers rights: immediate residence in any EU country, labour-market access, healthcare and schooling, without the backlogs, possible detention and restricted permits that characterise standard asylum processing. The proposal removes these rights for new male arrivals, redirecting them into the slow, uncertain, individually assessed procedures that govern everyone else who seeks asylum in the EU.

About 4.4 million people displaced from Ukraine have temporary protection status in the EU. Most are women and children: adult men account for 27%. The proposal targets only those who have crossed the border irregularly since the restrictions came into force — fewer than 1,000 persons a month according to Frontex.

This is not the only pressure being applied. Several member states have been systematically reducing the social support that makes temporary protection much better than asylum seeker status. Germany has moved new beneficiaries from the standard citizen’s benefit level down to the lower asylum-seeker payment rate. Ireland has cut weekly cash payments and capped state accommodation stays at 30 days. Norway has restricted payments to those in state dormitories. Poland has tied child payments to verified school attendance. Czechia removes benefits if Ukrainians don’t find work within 150 days. Not easy when most adult arrivals are women accompanied by children or vulnerable dependents.

Czech journalist Saša Uhlová has documented the effects of this erosion over four years of reporting. Lawyers and doctors working unqualified jobs; elderly and chronically ill beneficiaries excluded from public support; social workers burning out as state provision shrinks. And unregulated kandlords proposing accommodation in exchange for domestic and sexual services.

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, released an observations paper on the same day as the EC proposal warning that "policies promoting premature returns" and "reductions in social support" are undermining protection for displaced Ukrainians, noting that civilian casualties in 2025 reached their highest levels since 2022 and that "the current realities on the ground in Ukraine do not meet the conditions for a safe and dignified return."

Conscription is Ukraine’s decision; refugee law is not the instrument to enforce it

According to EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner, "this is what Ukraine has asked us to do, and this is what we are doing."

Ukraine has the right to decide its own mobilisation policy. But using the TPD — a mechanism of international protection — to enforce Ukrainian conscription on those already outside the country is a different matter.

The class dimension of who actually evades conscription is documented by Sotsialnyi Rukh, the Ukrainian socialist organisation: a medical exemption costs $US 37,000; two Kyiv Oblast enlistment officers were detained in August 2024 having accumulated over $1.2 million in bribes. Those crossing the Carpathians on foot or wading across the Tisza into Romania are not, in the main, those who had $37,000 available. Ukraine’s oligarchs continue to move freely as they hide their cash and make their deals. For them, European doors are always open. 

Not all EU member states have agreed to the exclusion. Slovakia and Hungary — both with large Ukrainian migrant populations, and almost no refugees and asylum seekers from Africa or Asia — oppose it. France, whose National Court of Asylum has recognised conscientious objection as a possible ground for refugee status, is also opposed.

The Commission’s proposal requires a qualified majority of 15 of 27 states representing 65% of EU population; it is not yet adopted.

What deportation produces: the documented record on Russian asylum seekers

The human and political failure of EU asylum policy is most clearly visible not in the treatment of Ukrainian men but in the systematic rejection of Russian asylum seekers fleeing the war.

Germany has rejected 95% of applications from Russian men of military age since 2022. Germany’s Federal Migration Office cites Putin’s 2022 claim that mobilisation is "complete" — a claim that was false when applied and is false now: Russia’s Criminal Code amendments of late 2025 removed judicial discretion over suspended sentences for deserters who left the country, meaning returned failed asylum seekers face near-certain imprisonment. 

The Baltic states have adopted blanket restrictions. Finland now turns away asylum seekers, from any country, on its land border with Russia. Estonia refuses entry to anyone with prior Russian military service, regardless of desertion status.

The United States has provided a concrete demonstration of what deportation in these conditions produces. In December 2025, 64 Russian nationals were deported on a single flight to Moscow. All the men on board were handed military summonses on arrival; two were arrested at the airport — one anti-war activist charged with "justifying terrorism," one deserter charged with abandonment of his unit. The deportation lists had been submitted in advance to the Russian consulate. Near-monthly deportation flights have continued since.

Meanwhile, over 1,800 people are imprisoned in Russia on politically motivated charges, and more than 1,288 face criminal prosecution specifically for anti-war activities. OVD-Info, the organisation that monitors these cases, was designated "extremist" by Russian authorities on 4 June 2026, meaning anyone inside Russia who supports it now faces criminal prosecution. It continues to operate in exile, maintaining the monitoring database that forms the evidential basis for most asylum cases.

The organisations doing what governments will not

The European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU) demands "the right to asylum for Russian and Belarusian refugees, and asylum seekers from other conflict zones"; and opposes "reductions in the social benefits for Ukrainians under temporary protection [while ensuring] a fair and equal system of social benefit."

Connection e.V. and Pro Asyl in Germany have built the legal framework for conscientious objector and deserter protection. Connection e.V. is currently seeking church sanctuary for Nikita Zvezdov, a 19-year-old Russian deserter at risk of deportation. 

Idite Lesom (Get Lost) operates through an anonymous Telegram bot to advise men inside Russia on avoiding conscription and to help deserters reach safety. Around 60% of those it helps remain inside Russia in hiding, unable to obtain the international passports needed to cross borders. 

A Farewell to Arms (Proshchai Oruzhie), based in France and founded by Russian deserters, supports those who have reached Europe. Russie-Libertés in Paris works with deserters stranded in Kazakhstan and Armenia who cannot obtain EU entry visas. 

The deserters.org network calls for recognition of desertion as an asylum ground across all EU member states, and for laissez-passer documents for those without passports — covering both Russian and Ukrainian deserters.

What the policy should be

Temporary protection status should be maintained for all beneficiaries from Ukraine. The benefit reductions that are compressing that protection into a degraded form should be reversed rather than extended. Maintaining temporary protection for Ukrainian men does not weaken Ukraine; it maintains a population of qualified workers, carers and professionals in host countries who contribute to those economies and whose connections to Ukraine will matter for reconstruction. 

The same collective, fast-track instrument should apply to Palestinians displaced by Israeli bombardment. There is, across European publics, significant sympathy for Palestinians and real anger at governments’ half-hearted reduction of cooperation with a regime whose conduct the International Court of Justice is examining for genocide. That political sentiment has not translated into policy. No EU government has activated the TPD for Palestinians, no mainstream politician is calling for it. 

Russian and Belarusian nationals fleeing the war — deserters, anti-war activists, conscientious objectors — should be granted asylum, based on the documented reality of what Russia does to those it gets back. 

Granting protection to Russian war refusers is directly damaging to Putin’s war machine. Making Europe a genuinely hostile environment for the Russian war effort means taking in those who refuse to be part of it.

28 June 2026

Source: ESSF

Attached documents

• the-wrong-lever-europe-ukraine-and-the-refugee-question_a9686.pdf (PDF - 930.2 KiB)
  Extraction PDF [->article9686]

Footnotes

[1] The Temporary Protection Directive (TPD), activated in March 2022 under Council Directive 2001/55/EC, grants immediate collective protection to displaced persons without requiring individual asylum assessment. "Refugee" in international law refers specifically to a person granted protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention following individual determination; "asylum seeker" refers to a person whose claim is pending.

• Adam Novak

  Adam Novak is an editor of Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF) and former coordinator of the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU/RESU).

UN urges faster action as world falls behind on nature protection

The world is falling behind on its commitments to protect nature, the UN’s biodiversity chief has warned, ahead of a major international conference in Armenia aimed at accelerating action.


Issued on: 14/08/2026 - RFI

A dead fish floats in the Mediterranean Sea in the Gador sea reserve, northern Israel, on 29 October, 2022. Climate change, invasive species and human activity are threatening what remains of the eastern Mediterranean's severely impacted ecosystems. © AP Photo/Ariel Schalit

Four years ago, nearly all the world's countries agreed to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and seas by 2030, while wealthy nations pledged to provide developing countries with $30 billion (€26 billion) a year to help safeguard biodiversity.

But Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, said progress was still too slow to meet those goals.

“Implementation is not yet happening at the pace and scale needed to achieve [the targets]," Schomaker said in a statement, following nearly three weeks of preparatory negotiations in Nairobi, Kenya.

Representatives from the 196 countries that agreed to the biodiversity framework are due to meet in the Armenian capital Yerevan in October for the COP17 biodiversity conference, where they will assess progress and discuss how to step up their efforts.

“The task awaiting us in Yerevan in nine weeks will take all the stamina and determination that parties can summon,” Schomaker said.

France must speed up climate action, as watchdog warns current efforts fall short
Conservation gains

The Convention on Biological Diversity stated that governments had recognised that the world was not currently on track to achieve its biodiversity targets.

While there had been “promising efforts on conservation targets”, it said progress had been slower in areas including raising finance, redirecting environmentally harmful subsidies and ensuring more inclusive decision making.

Countries have nevertheless laid out an ambitious framework for halting the destruction of ecosystems and reversing biodiversity loss by the end of the decade.

At the centre of the agreement is a target of conserving at least 30 percent of the world’s land, inland waters and seas by 2030 – widely known as the 30 by 30 goal.

Governments are also under pressure to reduce incentives and subsidies that encourage activities harmful to nature, while significantly increasing financial support for biodiversity protection in developing countries.

However, the Convention said differences remained over how countries should strengthen implementation, including during “intense discussions around the Cali Fund”.

Created during the COP16 biodiversity talks in Colombia, the fund is intended to channel a share of the profits made by companies using genetic information derived from plants and animals towards countries and communities that help conserve those resources.

Almost all UN member states are parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The most notable exception is the United States.

Five major threats

Scientists and international organisations have repeatedly warned that human activity is driving a rapid decline in wildlife and ecosystems around the world.

The UN identifies five main human-induced causes of the biodiversity crisis – sometimes referred to as the “Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse”.

They are the destruction and alteration of natural habitats, the over-exploitation of resources such as water and wildlife, climate change, pollution and the spread of invasive species.

Agriculture, urban expansion, deforestation, industrial development and the extraction of natural resources have transformed large areas of the planet, while rising temperatures are placing additional pressure on already vulnerable ecosystems.

More than a quarter of the world’s animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The Yerevan conference will be closely observed as governments seek to demonstrate that the biodiversity commitments agreed four years ago can still be translated into concrete action before the 2030 deadline.

Despite the slow progress so far, the UN says existing conservation efforts show that countries do have the tools to reverse some of the damage – provided governments can increase funding and turn their pledges into action quickly enough.

 

Trump’s vaccine overhaul could fuel mistrust and leave Europe vulnerable to disease resurgence

By Giedre Peseckyte

Published on 13/08/2026 - EURONEWS

The fallout from US President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at reducing the number of universally recommended childhood immunisations could extend beyond the United States, fuelling vaccine mistrust and creating immunisation gaps.

US President Donald Trump signed the executive order on Monday, recommending reducing the number of diseases covered by universal routine childhood vaccination recommendations from 18 to 11.

Decisions as such could lead to immunisation gaps, leaving populations vulnerable to outbreaks and fuel mistrust in vaccines, Marco Cavaleri, head of the European Medicines Agency’s Public Health Threats Department, told Euronews.

Skipping routine childhood vaccinations could be “catastrophic," he said, adding that it risks “the return of diseases that we were able to contain and eliminate from our countries."

Moreover, it could hamper vaccine trust in society. Such decisions, as the one in the US, “unfortunately, could be very detrimental in terms of vaccine confidence,” Cavaleri warned.

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Unpacking Trump’s order

Trump’s order moves recommendations for COVID-19, influenza, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, RSV and hepatitis A and B away from universal routine vaccination. Some immunisations will remain recommended for children considered at higher risk, while others will be subject to “shared clinical decision-making” between parents and healthcare providers.

The order also recommends splitting the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate shots and administering them at separate visits. Separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines are currently not available in the US.

The move comes as US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has questioned vaccine safety and promoted claims linking vaccines to autism, despite extensive scientific evidence finding no causal association between vaccination and autism.

“The current evidence is unequivocal: vaccines - including the MMR vaccine - are safe and do not cause autism,” World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X on Wednesday.

Combination vaccines can also make immunisation easier for children, parents and healthcare workers. Therefore, vaccine development has been moving towards more combination vaccines, rather than fewer.

“So in actual fact, this [US] decision is going against what the future is going to bring to us in terms of getting better protection for children, adults and the elderly,” said Cavaleri, adding that "there is no scientific basis to split these vaccines."

While parents would still be able to choose to vaccinate their children through shared clinical decision-making, health experts warn that requiring separate shots and additional healthcare visits could lead some families to delay or skip vaccinations.

The changes could also reinforce vaccine hesitancy, potentially leaving populations more vulnerable to outbreaks of preventable diseases that have been eliminated or brought under control in many countries.

“Recent changes to US immunisation policy are not aligned with decades of evidence,” said Tedros. “That evidence is reviewed continuously as new data emerge from across the globe,” he added.

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The risks for Europe and the globe

Europe has already seen the consequences of falling vaccination coverage. Six countries — Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Spain, the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan — were found to have re-established measles transmission in 2024, according to the WHO.

Measles offers a stark example of what can happen when vaccination coverage falls.

“We are already now seeing the return of measles whenever the vaccination coverage gets lower,” Cavaleri said. “And we will see more coming, unfortunately, in the United States and other parts of the world.”

He warned that the situation can get “much worse” if vaccination numbers fall. “Just think about poliomyelitis. Do we want this to come back? I hope not,” Cavaleri said, urging people to vaccinate.

Health experts also warn that the US decision could further undermine public confidence in vaccines also in Europe.

The European Commission’s State of Vaccine Confidence report found that overall vaccine confidence has declined among the general public since 2020, with particularly notable decreases in confidence in many Central and Eastern European countries. US decision could fuel this trend even further.

And the consequences do not stop at borders.

“Europe is the region that we have a duty to look at. But these infectious diseases are causing global problems, global outbreaks, global epidemics,” Cavaleri said.