Welcome to Free Kiev

WARSAW: Last month, Andrei Kuznetsov left his native St. Petersburg and flew to Ukraine. When he arrived at the Kiev airport, he asked for political asylum. The bemused guards, unaccustomed to any sort of asylum-seekers, let alone Russian asylum-seekers, couldn’t figure out what to do with him. Finally, he told a Radio Liberty reporter, “they let me in as a tourist and gave me the link to a U.N. site with procedures for applying for asylum.”

Since arriving, Kuznetsov has found it easy to adapt: “There’s no prejudice against me as a Russian citizen. There’s much greater room for personal expression here than in Russia.