In the grounds for refusal they wrote “insufficient documents to cross the border”, although all the documents were present. 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. The volunteers consulted with a lawyer and recommended Ivan to go to the border service to apply for international asylum, after which the border service started threatening Ivan that they would “put him in prison for a long time if he was smart”, “find him in England too” and “take away his documents”.
When Ivan tried to record the threats “to find him” on the tape recorder, the border service started using physical force against Ivan and wringing his hands, after which Ivan, frightened, returned to the Russian border.
Ivan’s case is not the only one: on 19 August Estonia did not let several Ukrainians pass. According to the head of the border crossing at Narva Marek Liiv, these were those who had Russian citizenship or a residence permit or wanted “to enter the Schengen zone not as a refugee, but for tourism”. in which refusedFor example, a Ukrainian citizen, residing in Kharkov, who came to Donetsk to visit his mother at the end of January of this year, decided to flee the city on February 24: she was taken to the Stavropol Territory. Upon entering Russia, as a Ukrainian citizen, he filled out an immigration card, which indicated the legal limit of residence in the country in his case – until 24 August he did not apply for a Russian residence permit for asylum.
Even before the expiration of this period, the woman managed to find the money for the tickets and decided to go to France. Estonia was to become a transit country. On 9 August, at the same crossing as Ivangorod-Narva, an Estonian border guard, according to her, told her: “You have been on Russian territory for too long. You made your choice. At the exit “and put a stamp on the refusal of entry for lack of documents certifying the purpose of the trip.
In August, human rights activist Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko he wrotethat Estonia also refuses entry to Mariupol refugees. The reason given for the entry ban 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.
