Students from Crimea and Donbass risk being persecuted in Ukraine, according to a disinformation campaign launched by the pro-Kremlin press.
NEWS: “Students from Crimea and Donbass will be persecuted in Ukraine. The surnames of people enrolling in Ukrainian universities and coming from Crimea or the People's Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk will be coded to protect them from persecution.
The announcement was made at a forum in Kiev by the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Education and Science Liubomira Mandzii, PoltNavigator reports.
[…] “As regards security, it should be noted that the surnames of those enrolling in universities and coming from temporarily occupied territories or Crimea will be coded. They will not figure in our open systems. The coding is meant to protect them from being tracked and other actions, "Mandzii said."
NARRATIVE: Students coming from Crimea and Donbass are persecuted in Ukraine
LOCAL CONTEXT / ETHOS: In 2014, after the Euromaidan protests and the sacking of the fugitive president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia, Moscow annexed Crimea and started the Donbass war. In one part of that region, two self-proclaimed and unrecognized republics were formed: Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukraine has launched a military operation to reclaim its territories, but thanks to direct support from Moscow, Donetsk and Lugansk remain outside the control of the Ukrainian government. Russia is trying to break all ties between the local population and Ukraine, and to that end it promotes a false narrative, according to which the Ukrainian state has a Russophobic attitude, fueled by the West, and that this attitude is seen even in the way it treats Russian-speaking Ukrainians. In this context, another narrative emerged, about the risks to which students in the Ukraine territories controlled by Russia or pro-Russia students are exposed. The narrative in question is a continuation of the classic metanarrative about Russophobia in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, whose many versions can be found on Moscow-funded news portals.Kiev started concealing the names of students coming from Donbass and Crimea to the rest of Ukraine in 2016, and the explanation for this decision was given by the representative office of the President of Ukraine in Crimea, based in southern Ukraine. According to the Presidency, there have been various situations in the past when, following the publication of students' names, Russian border guards did not allow young people to enter Ukraine to take part in the registration procedure. Relatives of those students were also persecuted.
PURPOSE: To prove to the inhabitants of the Crimean Peninsula and the self-proclaimed republics of Lugansk and Donetsk that Ukraine persecutes Russian speakers. Russia's goal is to thwart any effort by Kiev to recover and reintegrate these territories.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The Deputy Minister of Education did not refer to persecution in the territory controlled by Kiev - the coded names are precisely meant to protect students and their families from being persecuted in the territories controlled by Russia or by Russia-funded mercenaries.If the names of future students become public, according to the logic of Kiev, their relatives in Donbass and Crimea might suffer, and students risk not being able to return home, as has happened in the past. For these reasons, but also to encourage them to come and study in the big Ukrainian cities, the Ministry of Education has been coding the names of such students since 2016. The Russian press has substantially changed the context, writing that in fact Russian speakers risk being persecuted by the people of Ukraine. To be more convincing, Russian journalists also published an excerpt from the Ukrainian official's speech. Liubomira Mandzii's speech can be viewed in full on the Facebook page of the “Ukraine-30” forum.
