Berlin, December 2024 – In response to a query by Matthias Moosdorf, the foreign policy spokesperson of the AfD’s Bundestag faction, the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag has published two reports on the situation of Russian minorities in Ukraine, Baltic states, Kazakhstan and Moldova.
The reports found that the situation of Russian-speaking populations in Kazakhstan and Moldova is relatively unproblematic, with the Russian language enjoying a high status, even among non-native speakers.
In contrast, the situation in Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia is more problematic, with the reports acknowledging that the governments of these countries have taken measures that restrict the rights of Russian minorities, particularly in the area of religious freedom. These measures include the prohibition of Russian Orthodox churches affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate, as well as pressure on these churches to secede.
The reports also noted that the opportunities for speaking Russian have been severely restricted, with the teaching of Russian in schools being strongly limited or even banned and Russian-language media being largely excluded from the public sphere.
In Ukraine, there are even monitoring bodies for shops that continue to use Russian as a language of communication, while in Estonia and Latvia, Russian-language television channels are banned and Russian-language newspapers face severe restrictions that make their publication almost impossible.
The reports attributed the causes of this situation primarily to Russia’s behavior, which, through its “aggressive ideology of ‘Russki Mir'” and the “struggle for imperial status” poses a threat to the territorial integrity of its neighboring countries.
The Russian minorities in these countries serve as a legitimization for Russia’s hegemonic aspirations and the reports consider the Soviet Union as a colonial power that disregarded the cultures of the indigenous populations, forcibly relocated parts of the indigenous population and settled members of the “superior Soviet titular nation” in their place. In this sense, the situation of the Russian minority in these countries is seen as a result of a “decolonization” process in Estonia and Latvia, an attempt to undo a Soviet occupation.