Jean-Louis Bourlanges, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the French National Assembly, was quoted on numerous sources as saying that the Ukrainian refugees will be “an immigration of great quality, intellectuals, one that we will be able to take advantage of”.
Similar comments were recorded from the Bulgarian Prime Minister who said, “these are not the refugees we are used to… these people are intelligent, they are educated people”. His deeply offensive comments were published on the Associated Press website.
And a former British Conservative member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan, wrote in the Daily Telegraph of the Ukrainian people being attacked: “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone.”
“The warm welcome to the Ukrainian refugees contrasts sharply with the recent scenes of the refugees from Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries stuck at the Belorussian border”, says Guney Yildiz, Turkey Researcher for Amnesty International. Just weeks ago, border guards from Latvia, Lithuania and Poland used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets to push thousands of asylum seekers back into Belarus. The story of those refugees has dropped out from the Western media.
The newly found enthusiasm among some European politicians about the “right kind of refugee”, was accompanied by numerous reports of non-European refugees being blocked at the border while white Ukrainians were given priority. Initially these reports were dismissed by commentators as “Russian disinformation” but evidence mounted. After a British reporter with The Independent Nadine White followed this up with UNHCR, on Tuesday March 1st the organisation finally admitted instances of racism on Ukraine’s borders.
Scores of journalists and influencers have called out racism in reports by some major Western media organisations describing white Ukrainian refugees as “civilised” and “European”, with the implication that conflicts “normally” happen in the “third world developing nations”.

hile on air, CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata stated last week that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen”

The BBC interviewed a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, who told the network: “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day.” Rather than question or challenge the comment, the BBC host flatly replied, “I understand and respect the emotion.” On France’s BFM TV, journalist Phillipe Corbé stated this about Ukraine: “We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime backed by Putin. We’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.”



In other words, not only do Ukrainians look like “us”; even their cars look like “our” cars. And that trite observation is seriously being trotted out as a reason for why we should care about Ukrainians.

An ITV journalist reporting from Poland said: “Now the unthinkable has happened to them. And this is not a developing, third world nation. This is Europe!”

Referring to refugee seekers, an Al Jazeera anchor chimed in with this: “Looking at them, the way they are dressed, these are prosperous … I’m loath to use the expression … middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees looking to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa. They look like any.”

And writing in the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan explained: “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations.”

after demonizing and abusing refugees, especially Muslim and African refugees, for years. “Anyone fleeing from bombs, from Russian rifles, can count on the support of the Polish state,” the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, recently stated. Meanwhile, however, Nigeria has complained that African students are being obstructed within Ukraine from reaching Polish border crossings; some have also encountered problems on the Polish side of the frontier.
In Austria, Chancellor Karl Nehammer stated that “of course we will take in refugees, if necessary”. Meanwhile, just last fall and in his then-role as interior minister, Nehammer was known as a hardliner against resettling Afghan refugees in Austria and as a politician who insisted on Austria’s right to forcibly deport rejected Afghan asylum seekers, even if that meant returning them to the Taliban. “It’s different in Ukraine than in countries like Afghanistan,” he told Austrian TV. “We’re talking about neighborhood help.”

The idea of granting asylum, of providing someone with a life free from political persecution, must never be founded on anything but helping innocent people who need protection. That’s where the core principle of asylum is located. Today, Ukrainians are living under a credible threat of violence and death coming directly from Russia’s criminal invasion, and we absolutely should be providing Ukrainians with life-saving security wherever and whenever we can. (Though let’s also recognize that it’s always easier to provide asylum to people who are victims of another’s aggression rather than of our own policies.)


But if we decide to help Ukrainians in their desperate time of need because they happen to look like “us” or dress like “us” or pray like “us,” or if we reserve our help exclusively for them while denying the same help to others, then we have not only chosen the wrong reasons to support another human being. We have also, and I’m choosing these words carefully, shown ourselves as giving up on civilization and opting for barbarism instead.