Her other sons were drafted into Assad’s army, where they remain today.Safa says she follows the situation in Syria closely through Facebook posts and Arabic news sites. A Russian woman and child have been killed in U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria while at least a dozen more are trapped. How do you expect me to go and live there,” Samir, an asylum seeker who declined to give his last name, told The Moscow Times.Children also have limited access to the education system.Yastrebov says it is both good and bad that visas for Russia can be procured illegally. Тhis is the minimum value since 2007.
In Russia, only two (!) Mailing Address: 9, Leontievsky lane, 125009 Moscow, Russian Federation.
“I gathered my documents together and went to the Federal Migration Service, and I waited and I waited and I was rejected.”Safa’s experience is not uncommon, says Yevgeny Yastrebov, director of the Syria program for the Civic Assistance Committee, an NGO which is the primary point of contact for refugees in Russia.According to his organization, of around 7,000 Syrians in Russia in 2018, just two held permanent refugee status. At the same time, her wedding dress business was rapidly losing customers.In February 2015, Safa fled to Russia on a business visa with plans to connect with a Syrian factory owner in the Moscow region. On April 20, 2015, the Ministry of Justice entered The Moscow Times’ team of journalists has been first with the big stories on the coronavirus crisis in Russia since day one. Safa’s classroom, empty on a late afternoon in August, is part of a temporary school for Syrian refugee children, who, without proper documents, have been unable to get into local schools.Like her students, Safa, a solemn woman with deep-set eyes and dark auburn hair, came to Russia to escape fighting in Syria. The authorities are generous with business and tourist visas and those who prefer to bypass official channels can buy visas through back channels for upwards of $3,000. Several days a week, they come together to learn Russian. The Federal Migration Services did not respond to a request for comment about the asylum process for Syrian citizens.“On a scale from zero to ten, the Russian asylum system is pretty much at zero,” Yastrebov said. Against this background, Russia’s numbers look insignificant: the largest country in the world has offered asylum to less than 0.2% of all refugees. Last year, UNHCR had counted a record number of 71 million people who fled their homes due to war and persecution. “I tell people: I have to give you the real picture and the real picture is that Russia is not accepting of refugees.” Russia is largely alone in its assessment that Syria is safe.
She left behind three sons in their twenties in the hope that she would return home soon.For many Syrians, getting to Russia is the easy part. On the walls around her, posters of the Arabic alphabet hang next to pictures of cartoon animals with their names written in Russian.housands — like Safa — with little hope of ever gaining permanent legal status.Safa’s first months in Russia were “very hard.” The Syrian factory owner didn’t return her calls and she struggled to find housing.As well as sending a striking geopolitical signal to countries involved in the conflict, Moscow’s approach has had reverberations back home. Over the year, the Russian migration service recognized only 23 people as refugees. Only 487 refugees in Russia have official status and papers that allow legal employment, according to Rosstat, the governmental statistics agency. +7 (495) 681-18-23, +7 (495) 681-15-32, +7 (968) 918-98-65 On April 20, 2015, the Ministry of Justice entered Another 1.5 million Syrians now live in Lebanon, the leader in the number of refugees per capita (every sixth Lebanese resident is a refugee). In a gray industrial city an hour outside of Moscow, Safa sits in front of a room full of low desks and child-size chairs. After Moscow announced its program to return refugees from countries neighboring Syria in August, EU officials “Russia has acknowledged that its facilitation of refugee return has to do with reconstruction efforts and unlocking international funding,” says Yury Barmin, an analyst with the Russian International Affairs Council.Refugees whose asylum claims are rejected are rarely given a clear answer why, says Yastrebov. Email: [email protected] Time Zone: GMT + 3