Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is the “biggest driving force” behind immigration to Europe. That is the claim made by the EU’s Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the EU migration commissioner singles out Russia and its president.

“Putin is always involved in major migration flows. It’s always Vladimir Putin,” he told the British business newspaper.

Brunner represents the Austrian People’s Party in Brussels; a party that sits in the same political group as Sweden’s Moderate Party and Christian Democrats.

Blaming the War on Iran

Brunner specifically highlights Russia’s support for former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and argues that it was the cause of millions of Syrians seeking refuge in Europe. The invasion of Ukraine, seven years after the peak of the migrant crisis, triggered yet another wave of refugees.

And now, when the US and Israel are bombing Iran, the Russian president is also to blame. Even though Russia is not the one doing the bombing.

“Vladimir Putin supported the regime there,” Brunner says of Iran’s leadership, adding:

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“So he is actually the main driving force behind migration to Europe.”

The migration commissioner simultaneously observes that the latest war with Iran has not yet led to any massive influx of migrants:

“But of course, we must remain vigilant, because the situation can change every day.”

From Blessing to Curse

The civil war in Syria contributed to more than two million Syrians applying for asylum in the EU. Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands were the countries that received the most migrants from Syria – together, these three countries received over a million from 2011 onward.

Back then, during the first half of the 2010s, the dominant and only permitted view in the EU was that all forms of immigration were positive. And that such a great number of immigrants arrived in Europe was something Sweden even thanked the US for.

“Basically, it’s the US that gives us these flows. You create wars, we get refugees,” said then-Finance Minister Anders Borg (M) during a speech at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington in April 2012.

“The largest ethnic minority in Sweden right now is Iraqis. We have a large group of Iranians. We have a large Somali group. A fairly large Afghan group. And we think this is an asset to Swedish society,” he continued.

Borg took the opportunity to boast before his American audience about how the Moderates-led government had opened Sweden’s borders for increased immigration. He added that this also contributed to more Chinese, Indians, and Russians in Sweden.

Since then, however, rhetoric has shifted in Europe. Today it is not just more permissible to question the extensive immigration, it is even most often identified as a problem.

A problem which, according to the EU’s migration commissioner Magnus Brunner, is now, in fact, Russia’s fault.

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