Europe’s Double Standard on Ukraine Refugees -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

A look at the European Union’s stance on Ukrainian refugees through policy, migration and humanitarian issues: A Refugee or a Migrant in 2028 With Ukrainian refugees now protected until March 2028, there appears to be some progress with a familiar paean to rights.

The extension of the Temporary Protection Directive looks like solidarity on paper. Thousands of Ukrainians, who fled Russia’s war of invasion will continue to have residence rights and access to employment, housing, health and education across EU member state. This is the most comprehensive human shield since recent European history.

However, from March 2027 onwards a tighter rule kicks in: men between the ages of 23 and 60 will only be eligible for protection if they can prove compliance with their military obligations and legal exit out of Ukraine. It does not affect those already in the EU, but it sends a strong message to future asylum seekers, Europe is no longer open with wide doors.

And now we begin to see the cracks in Europe’s moral clarity.

As the EU loudly condemns Russia for barbaric crimes including torture, forced deportations and grave human rights violations against Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians, it is simultaneously closing the door on many escaping that very conflict. Reports from the United Nations and independent monitors depict a hellish situation within Russian detention centers: electric shocks, sexual violence, mock executions, and medically induced starvation. This is not an isolated abuse, but a documented pattern.

The EU has responded by imposing asset freezes and travel bans on individuals and entities connected to these atrocities. It has insisted that the International Committee of the Red Cross be granted unfettered access, and has urged for those Ukrainians forcibly deported back to their homeland without delay.

However, Europe’s recent internal policy shift creates an embarrassing alternative: How can the EU lay claims to being a defender of human rights whilst having made asylum contingent on military cooperation?

The ban on military-age men, in effect, redefines asylum from a means of protection to a filter serving the wartime interest. It ultimately deepens the logic that some lives, those which can be useful to Ukraine’s defence are simply less worthy of being rescued. By doing so, the EU comes perilously close to instrumentalising the very notion of refugee protection.

Supporters of the policy say it complies with Ukraine’s sovereign right to conscript its citizens. However, this argument ignores a fundamental concept of refugee law: protection should not be contingent on political or military usefulness. The right to asylum exists for a reason, namely, to protect individuals from the coercive pressures of war, not compel them back into it.

The contradiction is stark. On the one hand, Europe lambasts Russia for treating fellow human beings as mere cannon fodder in their dirty war by equipping it with so called expendable instruments of battle; on the other hand, quietly declares a policy that risks pretty much the same thing (albeit in somewhat different formal legal context).

This is not just a administrative change. It is a crucible of Europe’s normative self.

If the EU is to respond to Russian brutality based on the universality of human rights, then its refugee policy should be similarly universal. Otherwise, its condemnation of Moscow is self-serving and selective, morally gratifying abroad but inconsistency at home.

Ultimately Europe’s credibility will not be measured by the sanctions it imposes on Russia but by how high a standard of behaviour it sets for itself within its borders.

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia