Vennink has been trying to extend his accreditation and visa in recent months. Foreign correspondents in Russia have to do this every year and normally it is a formality. De Volkskrant writes that this year has been difficult. On Monday, Vennink was suddenly told that his current visa had been revoked immediately. He had to leave Russia within three days.
‘Eviction comes as a surprise’
“The eviction comes as a surprise to me,” Vennink said in his own newspaper. He returned to the Netherlands today.
The official reason is older offenses he is said to have committed. It concerns two minor violations in the past two years: failure to provide a residence address and failure to request permission for a provincial visit. It is striking that these violations are only now being removed. In recent years, Vennink’s residence permit has been extended without any problems.
‘Russian bullying’
Volkskrant editor-in-chief Pieter Klok does not know why Vennink is being tackled. “It can be aimed at three things: against Tom personally, against de Volkskrant or against the Netherlands,” Klok told RTL Nieuws. “We think the latter, because the Netherlands does a lot of things that Russia does not like. But it’s guesswork.”
“Several Dutch journalists have difficulty extending their visas. And there were also travel restrictions only for Dutch journalists and not for others. We do get the feeling that it is a Russian bullying to the Netherlands.”
Vennink has been working for de Volkskrant as a correspondent in Russia since 2015. He wrote a report on, among other things: a mammoth park in the arctic circle, walked himself a marathon across Lake Baikal and made a video series about young Russians, the ‘generation Putin’:
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Vennink is the second foreign correspondent to be expelled from Russia in a short time. In August of this year, BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford had to leave.
Rainsford was classified by the Russian authorities as a ‘threat to national security’. She herself suspects that she was punished for a critical question to Aleksandr Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus and ally of President Putin. She made this report about her deportation:
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‘Seems like a targeted campaign’
RTL Nieuws correspondent Eva Hartog finds the expulsion of foreign journalists a worrying development. “We have seen before that Russian journalists are treated harshly. They are harassed in all kinds of ways: for example, they are branded as ‘foreign agents’ or they are declared ‘undesirable’.”
“But foreign journalists were able to continue their work relatively undisturbed. That now seems to be changing. It seems to be a targeted campaign to silence independent reporting about Russia.”
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Netherlands under fire
It is not certain that Vennink will be deported because of his Dutch nationality. However, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recently made striking statements about the Netherlands.
“In recent years, not a day goes by without the Netherlands cracking down on us. Official representatives of that country are constantly dissatisfied with us. Why do they behave like this? Hard to say,” spokesperson Maria Zakharova posted on Facebook in October. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia regulates visas and accreditations for foreign correspondents.
Earlier this week, the Russian ambassador in The Hague Aleksandr Shulgin went a step further. During a press conference he expressed specific criticism of the Dutch media. “Unfortunately, with exceptions, Dutch media mainly publish negative stories about our country.” The ambassador called it “anti-Russian publications” and “fake news.”
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‘Definite eviction’
According to de Volkskrant, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has tried to prevent the deportation until the last moment. The Dutch ambassador has asked for clarification in Moscow and the matter has been discussed with Ambassador Shulgin in The Hague. Without result.
“We have experienced in the past that a residence permit was withdrawn,” says Volkskrant editor-in-chief Klok. “The NRC had that, but it was quickly rectified. Now it seems like a definitive eviction. And that is really new.”
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