Estonia did not let in Ukrainian citizen Ivan Popivshchy, who was evacuated from Svatov (Luhansk region), where active hostilities are taking place. Popivshchiy planned to go through Estonia to the UK, he had a plane ticket, internal and biometric Ukrainian passports. This was reported to The Insider by volunteers coordinating the departure of Ukrainians abroad, who helped Popivshchy. He entered from the territory of Russia through the Ivangorod-Narva border checkpoint. Volunteers note that Ivan has never lived in Russia, he crossed the border from the territory of the Russian Federation due to the fact that he and his family live in the temporarily occupied territory of the Lugansk region, from which travel to Europe and to Ukrainian-controlled territory is possible only through the Russian Federation. A photo of Ivan's Ukrainian passport is at the disposal of The Insider.
According to volunteers, the Estonian border guard checked Ivan's phone and decided that the phone was "some kind of cleaned up." He explained that he deleted only a few correspondence for his own safety at the Russian border, as he was afraid of the results of the phone check by the Russians and played it safe. After such a response, the Estonian border guards rudely forced Ivan to sign a refusal to enter Estonia. In the refusal, his place of residence is defined as the Russian Federation, despite the fact that Popivshchy lived, we recall, in the Luhansk region.
In the reasons for the refusal, they wrote down “not enough documents to cross the border”, although all the documents were there. After Ivan signed the paper, the border guard told him to "get out of here, the conversation with him is over for today."
Then Popivshchy contacted the coordinators, explained that Estonia would not let him in and asked what he should do next. Volunteers consulted with a lawyer and recommended Ivan to apply to the border service in order to request international asylum, after which the border service began to threaten Ivan that they would “put him in jail for a long time if he was smart”, “find him even in England” and “take him away the documents".
When Ivan tried to record threats “to find him” on the recorder, the border service began to use physical force against Ivan and wring his hands, after which Ivan, frightened, returned to the Russian border.
Ivan's case is not the only one – on August 19, Estonia did not let several Ukrainians through. According to the head of the Narva border checkpoint Marek Liiv, it was about those who had Russian citizenship or a residence permit or wanted to “enter the Schengen zone not as a refugee, but for the purpose of tourism.” At the same time , for example, a citizen of Ukraine, a resident of Kharkov, who came to Donetsk to visit her mother at the end of January of this year, decided to flee the city on February 24 – she was taken to the Stavropol Territory. At the entrance to Russia, as a citizen of Ukraine, she filled out a migration card, which indicated the permissible limit of legal stay in the country in her case – until August 24, she did not apply for a Russian residence permit for asylum.
Even before the expiration of this period, the woman was able to find money for tickets and decided to go to France. Estonia was to become a transit country. On August 9, at the same Ivangorod-Narva crossing, an Estonian border guard, according to her, told her: “You have been on the territory of Russia for too long. You have made your choice. To the exit, ”and put a stamp on the refusal of entry due to the lack of documents confirming the purpose of the trip.
In August, human rights activist Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko wrote that Estonia also denied entry to refugees from Mariupol. The reason given for the denial of entry was "a long period of stay in Russia". According to the refugees themselves, they simply did not have the means and the opportunity to leave earlier.