MOSCOW, June 10 -- In Turku, a Ukrainian woman in her mid-thirties recently told a Finnish broadcaster she had taken a warehouse job she did not want because it was the fastest path to a work-based residence permit - and away from the uncertainty of depending on temporary protection that could, in principle, always end. That calculation, multiplied across hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian adults in Europe, is now the raw material of a Russian Foreign Ministry argument.

Maria Zakharova, Moscow's chief spokesperson, said Wednesday that European governments have grown exhausted with Ukrainian refugees and are actively looking to remove them - including, she alleged, through lists that would channel men directly to the front. Zakharova made...