Hugo Dionísio
The EU - of governments that promise one thing and do another - gave the Ukrainian people its poison.
Introduction: From "solidarity" to strategy
When Russia first entered Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union reacted with a speed and generosity unprecedented in the bloc's history. Knowing what we know today about Frontex, the billions Europeans pay to have genuine concentration camps built in the EU's peripheral countries, or what we know about how European peoples tend to treat immigrants seeking economic refuge there, we might have been led astray.
What had happened this time ? Some speculated about skin color, blond hair, and blue eyes, while others, still, were enchanted by the celebrated feminine beauty of Slavic women; but none of that had mattered in other situations where NATO, the USA, and the EU - the West - decided to move its military might against populations considered lesser or subject to a certain need for discipline. Namely in the case of Yugoslavia and, to this day, Serbia. After all, what was this Western "generosity," as exceptional as it was disconcerting, that led to the almost immediate activation of the Temporary Protection Directive - a mechanism created after the Balkan wars but never used ? Had an epiphany of remorse occurred ? A surge of self-awareness?
Millions of Ukrainian citizens were welcomed with the right to residence, work, social assistance, and healthcare. Everything that is debated as impossible to guarantee to immigrants with skin tanned by the Mediterranean sun was readily granted to Ukrainian refugees. Without any disdain for the solidarity extended to those fleeing war, the truth is that it was shocking to see this true attempt at whitewashing historical memory originate precisely from those who were behind the outbreak of the conflict, from those who have always denied such solidarity to peoples like the Palestinians, Libyans, Syrians, or Iraqis - equally victims of the logic of aggression of NATO, the USA, and its European extension.
In this case it was different ! On the other side stood the Russian bogeyman, stood Vladimir Putin, elevated to the worst dictator in human history, while Western Europe had forgotten that it had given birth to people like Hitler or Mussolini, as forgotten as they are targets of historical whitewashing processes and revisionist rewriting that sought to compare those who most fought and were victims of Nazi-fascism to their equals.
We can also say that the Russian Federation received millions of Ukrainians. That is true ! But this reception was far from exceptional or unexpected. After all, the Russian Federation always claimed that one of the reasons for its intervention in Ukraine related to the need to defend the Russian-speaking peoples of Ukraine. Moreover, we all knew that the anxiety for intervention in the Donbass had long been transmitted by popular forces to the Kremlin, so that it would stop the massacre of Russians. For the Russian people, this war is a war for the Russian world, for its language, religion, and culture. For its right to exist. Something the West cannot accept.
I. The numbers that tell the story
According to data from the Centre for Economic Strategy of Ukraine, as of November 2024, 5.2 million Ukrainian refugees remained abroad. Of these, 3.7 million left through the western border, heading toward Europe. Through Russia or Belarus, it is estimated that about 239,000 people left. Another 1.3 million, according to the UN, became refugees in Russia or Belarus itself.
If Ukraine was divided, roughly, into one-third Ukrainian speakers, one-third speakers of a mix of Russian and Ukrainian, and one-third Russian speakers, then given the opening of the Russian borders, a mass exodus in that direction would have been expected. Unless the EU also opened its borders. There, the European dream would prevail - the same dream that almost destroyed the Russian Federation, that had destroyed the USSR, and that now threatens to destroy Ukraine. Never wish to belong to those who deem you inferior!
We can say that this EU goodwill functioned as a competitive counterweight to the natural and expected opening of Russia. Deep down, the EU knew that many Ukrainians did not see the Russian Federation as an enemy, but as part of their world. The number of Ukrainians from the center - not to mention the Donbass - who had some kind of connection to the Russian Federation was very high. In that sense, the EU could not risk letting such populations have the Russian Federation as their only possible destination of flight.
This attitude demonstrates that, deep down and without ever admitting it, the EU knew very well that the Kiev regime was not leading a popular struggle against the Russian Federation. In that sense, the EU was forced to act in the face of the predictable mass flight of populations. At its peak, 16 million Ukrainians had fled their homes!
It was at this stage that the funding from the USA, the EU, and the United Kingdom to the mass media outlets of Kiev and the West became very important, so that they would produce news that: 1. Convinced Europeans to accept this sudden migratory wave as something honorable and morally imperative, thereby mitigating the attacks on refugees perpetrated throughout the EU, and not only on migrants from the Global South - see the cases of persecution of Portuguese immigrants in Ireland; 2. Convinced the more indecisive Ukrainians about the destination of their flight that in the EU they would find an easy life.
All of this had as its epilogue the flight of the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians to the West rather than the East. The truth is that it was very difficult for the Russian Federation to compete with the "European appeal." The EU offered rights, subsidies, employment, schools for children, access to healthcare, whereas the Russian Federation only offered a Russia denigrated and dehumanized by years of strategic bad press. The offer was too attractive, and even many Russian-speaking Ukrainians ended up succumbing to the appeal.
The "obviousness" with which many Ukrainians saw salvation in the West and the apparent "rationality" of the decision, motivated by the exceptional policy of "open arms" toward refugees, may after all have concealed a way of waging war by other means. Time would prove those who thought so right. What, then, did this sudden and exceptional policy of "open arms" toward "refugee" Ukrainians - many of them too far from the disputed territories at the time of the decision - hide?
II. The EU welcomes - but controls
The Temporary Protection Directive, activated in March 2022, granted legal status in the EU to more than 4.3 million Ukrainians. Germany welcomed about 1.8 million, Poland almost 1 million, Czechia about 380,000. Countries with supremacist governments known for their xenophobic, neo-fascist, and "Slavophobic" positions were the ones that opened their arms the widest. The result of such a decision and the way their populations viewed it are visible in the growth - and rise to power - of the far right. Even if, in the German case, that far right is called the CDU - just as in Portugal we have already seen it can also go by the name of PSD/CDS.
The fact is that, proving the artificiality of the status, it came accompanied by a fundamental characteristic: its temporary, perennial, precarious nature ! Such protection was successively extended - in October 2023, June 2024, or July 2025 - but always with the caveat that one day it would end. The promise was simple: when it ended, the "refugees" would have to return or transition to another available legal status (work, study, family reunification).
But it was in September 2025 that the EU Council confirmed its real intentions, adopting a recommendation on the "transition out of temporary protection," in which a common framework was established for the return to Ukraine and reintegration of displaced Ukrainians. The European dream ended here ! After all, it was not meant to be permanent, not even under another status ! From increasingly open, the European Union revealed itself to be nothing more than a kind of storage bag, in which human resources would be temporarily kept to be made available according to the needs of the war effort.
While pushing Ukraine around as if it were a bowling ball, the EU kept in its bag the human assets that it could later use. Perhaps in order to prepare a mental framework for the Ukrainian refugees, so that they would not be caught off guard by the end of the European dream, political messages began to parade, increasingly less veiled: the Danish minister Kaare Dybvad Bek stated at the time that the plan aimed to ensure a "gradual and sustainable" return. No longer was there talk of work, education, or creating family ties. The emphasis increasingly shifted to return. One could say that here, too, the EU opened the drawstrings of the bag.
I pity those who believed that Ukraine had been caught off guard by the "Special Military Operation." I pity those who thought that the EU's intervention had been spontaneous and unexpected. The RAND Corporation document "Extending Russia" clearly shows how long this intervention had been in the making. The fact that Angela Merkel and François Hollande came to admit that the Minsk agreements served to buy time against Russia and to militarize Ukraine also demonstrates that this reality was anything but unexpected. Only the Ukrainians may have been caught by surprise, but the EU knew that these millions of people would not stay forever and that among them were hundreds of thousands of men and women of military age.
III. The gradual cuts: From generosity to pressure and Kiev's response
It was, therefore, no surprise that we witnessed the changes that followed gradually, surreptitiously, insidiously, and tremendously cynically for the Ukrainian people, especially those who thought they were protected by the West. Today, they are about to pay dearly for the decision they had made.
Despite warnings and appeals, the Ukrainian refugee population insisted on not budging. But, to force their hand and prevent the entry of more refugees, in November 2025 the German government approved a bill to reduce subsidies for Ukrainians arriving after April 1, 2025. Instead of receiving the Bürgergeld (€563 for a single adult), they would receive the asylum system amount (€441), about 20% less than the initial amount. Access to healthcare was likewise restricted: only essential care was covered, not the full statutory system. The Ukrainians were beginning to learn what it meant to be a foreigner in the West. The German Interior Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, was explicit: if there is no effort to find employment, "further cuts in payments will follow."
In Poland, the financial support for families hosting refugees (40 PLN/day) and the installation subsidy (300 PLN) were discontinued as early as July 2024. On that date, Ukrainian refugees began to be "encouraged" to become economically self-sufficient. In Ireland, also since 2024, weekly payments to refugees housed by the State had been cut, on the grounds that "the housing itself covers part of basic needs." Finally, in Hungary, a decision was even made to cancel state-funded housing for refugees from western regions of Ukraine, now considered "safe." "Safe" from the Russians ! But what about the puppets of the TCC?
The message was clear: the door is closing. It is time to leave ! Something that came in handy given Kiev's repeated efforts to get European countries to force military-age Ukrainians to return, even by brute force, such is the love the regime bears for them!
It was also at this stage that Ukraine tried to recruit its diaspora. In 2025, the government implemented reforms to make military service more attractive: fixed-term contracts (1-5 years), increased base salaries (50-60 thousand UAH), enlistment bonuses, and the possibility of choosing one's brigade.
As was predictable, the results were very meager. Not even the high employment rate among refugees in Germany (which rose from 30% to 51% since 2024) benefited recruitment. Even stripped of social support, Ukrainian refugees continued to prefer Western exploitation to Ukrainian death. Although in Poland the employment rate was even higher (above 70%), this did not translate into military recruitment. But this succession of policies, on one side and the other of the Western camp, would help highlight the existence of deep coordination aimed at using Ukrainian refugees as cannon fodder for Kiev, the EU, NATO, and the USA.
IV. The military manpower crisis and "busification"
But nothing seemed to work. The patriotic appeal was almost nonexistent in a very recent country marked by ethnic division and historical artificiality. Not even the revisionism driven by USAID and taught, especially since the Orange Revolution, in elementary schools seems to have been decisive in conferring such patriotic depth on many Ukrainians. According to the OSW Centre for Eastern Studies, in Ukraine only about 200,000 people were recruited in 2024 - a number insufficient to maintain frontline units. Not even the recourse to Africans, South Americans (from drug cartels coming to learn in Ukraine), members of the Islamic State, Poles, North Americans, or Canadians was enough to combat the degradation of the front.
The Kiev regime's response consisted of the brutal hardening of conscription, in the Nazi style and in the style of regimes that use populations for their own ends. This is perhaps the great difference from what happens when populations feel that the aggression is real, targeting their world and their existence. In those cases, populations engage in the struggle because the liberation struggle is a popular struggle. In Iran, people increasingly unite in the face of aggression from the USA/Israel/Gulf; in Russia they have never been so united since the Patriotic War; in Cuba, except for a minority, not even the medieval and prolonged genocidal siege demoves that people; in Gaza and Palestine few budge; and in North Korea, tenacious resistance is now beginning to bear economic and social fruit. In Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, and Cape Verde, the liberation struggle against the aggressor involved the peoples and the popular struggle. In Ukraine, the people flee ! This war is not theirs!
The fact is that, in 2014, when the Donbass revolted against the Maidan coup, the inhabitants of the region defended their world - many voluntarily. On the Kiev side, the story was different. Mobilization always faced resistance. For all that the international press, in the hands of the USA and Zionism, hides widely documented phenomena such as "busification," the networks of traffickers helping people cross the border (120 officials detained in 2024, 61 indictments, bribes of 11.4 million hryvnias), the 290,000 cases of desertion, or the 2 million draft evaders, all of this points to a war that is not popular, at least not on the Ukrainian side. The exception to this rule are the most aggressive far-right forces - the Azov, the Aidar, and other neo-Nazi groups. These, yes, want war. Just like Zelensky, just like NATO.
In the absence of a genuine popular liberation struggle, Kiev was forced to follow the path of those who use workers to feed the wars of the rich, which says much about the intrinsic nature of the regime. The 2024 Mobilization Law (Law No. 3633-IX), which entered into force on May 18, 2024, lowered the mobilization age from 27 to 25, introducing a mandatory digital military registry (Oberih), tightening exemptions. Nearly elderly people and some with disabilities were seen on the battlefield. Today, after the extension to women, there is already talk of lowering compulsory conscription to 18 years of age.
The most revealing element of this reality is the phenomenon of "busification" - the Ukrainian term to describe the violent detention of men on the street, in restaurants, in nightclubs, and their forced transport to recruitment centers. Responsible Statecraft documented dozens of incidents, including men who died before even putting on the uniform. Hitler did the same, faced with German resistance to continuing his imperialist war. In the end, Hitler blamed the German people. Zelensky will do the same ! That is how those who do not live with the people, among the people, as the people behave!
The situation is so grave that, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, about 2 million citizens are evading military service, the majority abroad. By May 2025, 45,000 people had left the country illegally to escape conscription, and another 30,000 had been detained at the border. Desertion proceedings were filed against 290,000 individuals.
V. The men abroad: The consular card
To respond to this crisis, in coordination with the European Union, Kiev became even more incisive and, as early as April 2024, decided to accompany all existing pressures with the decision to suspend consular services for all men of military age (18-60 years) abroad. Access to passports, certificates, and essential official documents was cut off. There was nothing Kiev would not gamble to get these people back To their deaths!
The message was clear: register with the army or you lose your documents. The objective is clear: make their lives unsustainable until return becomes the only option.
VI. The EU lines up: Excluding men of military age
Those who thought that the EU of "principles and values" would come to their defense should have fled in another direction. In June 2026, the news broke in the press: the EU was considering excluding Ukrainian men of conscription age (23-60 years) from temporary protection. This proposal gained traction at a meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourg. German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt confirmed: "We have noticed that the influx of people of compulsory military service age has increased in recent months." It became perfectly clear what this EU understands by "defending the Ukrainian people."
Meanwhile, Belgium began requiring proof of legal exit from Ukraine in order to grant protection, while Poland, on the other hand, continues to grant protection to those who reach its territory, but some signs of change have emerged from Warsaw, notably after the Polish regime's fantastic discovery that genocidal Nazis are idolized as heroes in Kiev. Under pressure from their populations, Polish authorities could no longer turn a blind eye to such immorality.
Zelensky, for his part, has been clear: military-age men who left the country "should return," and he asked partner countries to "address the issue." The EU, which in 2022 opened its doors to all, has now begun selecting who can stay and who must return. And those who must return are, precisely, the men who can fill the ranks of death, bodies that will inevitably be abandoned on the battlefield, left to the Russians to freeze, so that pensions need not be paid. Some will have even less luck, for while still half-alive they will see their vital organs extracted, to be placed in the body of some gerontocratic oligarch on the brink of death, in some Israeli or Gulf clinic.
VII. The strategic "military" reserve
Did the EU and NATO plan this from the beginning ? It is impossible to prove a conspiratorial intent. But the material result is the same as if they had planned it:
Open the doors to millions of Ukrainians, attracted by the European appeal.
Keep them in the territory with temporary protection, subsidies, and rights.
When the war drags on and Ukraine needs men, cut the subsidies, restrict rights, suspend or invalidate documents.
Force the return - not through direct deportation, but by making stay unsustainable.
Hand the men over to the Ukrainian armed forces.
In essence, the EU kept with it a labor army (of military manpower) in reserve, ready to be exploited when needed. Such a strategic reserve not only defrauded all the refugees who thought they would find protection in the EU, but also led the Kiev regime to despise the lives of its soldiers even more deeply, certain that when the crisis came, it could count on the "good" will of its European paymasters to forcibly mobilize, as fascists do, the Ukrainians who had turned to the EU fleeing war and seeking peace.
The EU - of governments that promise one thing and do another - gave the Ukrainian people its poison. Now the hour has come to release them, until none remain in the hands of their executioners!
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