Russians who participated in the war in Ukraine seek political asylum in the European Union

In recent years, only a few dozen deserters from the Russian army have been granted political asylum in the European Union.

However, if the leaders of eight EU countries, who have called for stricter visa rules for all Russians who have participated in the war in Ukraine, achieve their goal, Europe may no longer be an option.

Earlier this month, eight EU member states publicly called on the bloc’s leadership to tighten visa regulations for Russian citizens who served in the country’s war in Ukraine. In a letter to European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the leaders, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, warned that the war was creating long-term internal security risks for the Schengen free movement area and argued that once demobilized or removed from the war zone, Russian soldiers could try to travel to the EU, where they could potentially contribute to a rise in organized and violent crime.

“Individuals who have participated in the war as part of the armed forces of the aggressor state pose serious risks to internal security, including violent crime, organized crime networks, extremist movements, or hostile state activity in the broader context of Russia’s hybrid action,” the letter said. “Among them, there are more than 180,000 previously convicted criminals who were recruited from Russian prisons and sent to the front.”

In fact, the number of visas issued to Russian citizens continues to increase despite the war in Ukraine, with 80% of the approximately 670,000 Schengen visa applications made by Russian citizens last year being approved, a figure that makes Russians one of the five nationalities that have received the highest number of EU visas.

“Any entry could have serious consequences for the security of a Member State or the entire Schengen area,” the open letter continued, before its authors asked the European Commission to prepare “targeted amendments” to the EU Visa Code “or other appropriate instruments with a view to enabling a coordinated European approach.”

However, the EU has significantly tightened access to the bloc for Russian citizens since Moscow's full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and most Schengen visas are now issued for shorter periods and with more limited validity.

Transit asylum

The new rules could make life much more difficult for Russian army deserters seeking refuge in Europe. However, many of them are initially settled in Armenia, a country where Russians do not need a visa or even a foreign passport to enter.

Oleg Lapshin*, a former Russian soldier currently living in Yerevan after defecting from the Russian army, says the initiative being taken by EU leaders will leave defectors less room to maneuver, although he remains convinced that countries such as Armenia will “continue to accept people” even if Europe no longer does so.

Military personnel in Russia generally do not hold foreign passports — they were either never issued one, or they surrendered them to the authorities when they were recruited.

“If the EU completely restricts entry for those involved in the war without vetting them, without a hearing, without considering the individual merits of each case, then that is unfortunate. People who are aware of this but still want to defect from the Russian military will take this into account and it is likely to be one of the factors that prevents them from defecting.”

At the same time, Lapshin acknowledges that the European Union has the right “to consider us all criminals and deny us all entry,” although he emphasizes that such an approach would not lead to anything good, since the goal should be to encourage desertion in order to reduce Russia’s military capabilities.

Anastasia Burakova, founder of The Ark, notes that military personnel in Russia generally do not hold foreign passports – they were either never issued one, or they surrendered them to the authorities when they enlisted in the army. This inevitably plays a significant role in how deserters choose a country to flee to. Russian citizens can only enter Armenia, Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan without an international passport. However, the latter two are much less safe, with a higher risk of extradition or kidnapping.

“In the context of deserters, it’s not easy to get somewhere; people mutilate themselves, shooting themselves in parts of their bodies, so they can leave the front through a hospital. Armenia doesn’t take any steps towards actual extradition, so staying there is safer, but due to the lack of a land border, fleeing to Armenia is more difficult than to Kazakhstan,” says Burakova.

The road to Europe

Most military deserters are determined to get as far away from Russia as possible and tend to see well-known destinations for anti-war Russians, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, as too close to Russia, both politically and geographically, to be safe.

One of those who initially fled Russia to Armenia is Alexander Polyakov*, who enrolled in a military academy at the age of 18 after being unable to finance his university education. After graduating in 2021, Polyakov joined the Russian army as a professional soldier and in early 2022 was sent to Russian-annexed Crimea for what he was told were military exercises, but which turned out to be preparations for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On February 24, he found himself crossing the Ukrainian border with his unit and on the front lines, where he says he immediately realized that the Russian army was completely unprepared to fight a war. Assigned to work in military communications, Polyakov constantly moved between positions under fire and narrowly escaped death on several occasions. After several months of fighting, he decided to leave the army for good and, after being granted leave, returned to Russia.

When mobilization was announced in September 2022, it became clear that he would soon be sent back to the front, and so Polyakov bought a flight to Kazakhstan, where he lived in fear for the next two years. Wanted by Russian authorities, Polyakov used only cash and rarely went out, fearing arrest or extradition.

However, during that time, he met human rights activists and other deserters, and began helping to verify the stories of Russian soldiers who had also deserted from the army. Eventually, he began speaking out publicly against the war and became involved in various human rights initiatives along with a group of deserters from the Russian army.

After a year and a half of negotiations, Polyakov and five other deserters from the Russian army were finally given laissez-passer documents allowing them to fly to France, where they applied for political asylum upon arrival.

Polyakov's case is not unique. Before the war, Kamil Maksimov* was studying to become an astronomer, working as a technician, and had no plans to join the military. However, all that changed in 2023, when he was arrested on drug charges. According to him, he was given a choice: go to prison or be drafted to fight. He reluctantly agreed to sign a military contract, hoping that he would have the opportunity to desert after being deployed.

After completing basic training, Maksimov was sent to the front line in the Donetsk region, where he was quickly wounded and transferred to a unit he describes as a “suicide battalion” for rioters. Realizing that he would soon be sent back to the front line, Maksimov decided to desert and shot himself in the leg. After recovering from his wound in a hospital in Russia, he fled to the city of Kazan after learning that his redeployment was imminent.

Still recovering from his self-inflicted injury, Maksimov spent several months in hiding, barely leaving his home. Once he was well enough, he fled Russia via Georgia, where he decided to seek asylum in France. Upon arriving in Paris, he told his story to an immigration officer, applied for political asylum, and was granted a temporary document that allowed him to live in the country, access healthcare, and receive benefits.

Polyakov now lives in Nice, where he is learning French and hoping to find a job. He says that for the first time in his life, he feels at peace and is no longer afraid of being stopped on the street and sent back to the front lines.

Justice for deserters

According to Grigory Sverdlin, who heads Get Lost, an underground organization that helps Russian soldiers defect, the number of requests his NGO receives is constantly growing and has seen a 30% increase so far this year alone. In January and February, Get Lost helped 248 Russian servicemen defect and go into hiding.

Sverdlin says the security concerns raised by some EU leaders about Russian defectors taking asylum in Europe are unfounded. “The war has been going on for four years; a number of Russian defectors have been in Europe for a long time, yet I have not heard of a single case of one of them committing a serious crime.”

Although he says he fully supports “thorough vetting of applicants and preventing those involved in the invasion from entering the Schengen area,” he warns that everything depends on how such a policy is implemented.

Noting that about 85% of those supported by Get Lost have never taken part in active combat in Ukraine or been to the occupied territories, Sverdlin wonders whether those reviewing asylum applications in Europe will take such details into account or simply reject anyone who has ever been in the Russian military. He suspects the latter approach is more likely to prevail.

“It would be right to create a special path for Russian deserters and conscientious objectors to obtain refugee status. These people risk imprisonment in Russia, and if it is discovered that they have deserted their units, they face up to 15 years in prison,” says Sverdlin. “Establishing a working procedure for deserters to obtain political asylum would increase the number of deserters from the Russian army and thus help Ukraine.”

Earlier this year, InTransit, an organization that helps Russians facing political persecution leave the country, told Novaya Europe that attitudes toward Russian defectors in Europe had hardened significantly since the early years of the war in Ukraine. Northern Europe in general and the Baltic states in particular generally do not accept Russian military defectors and have even, in some cases, forced them back across the border, InTransit said.

Only a few countries — such as Germany, France, and Spain — examine asylum applications made by defectors in a relatively objective manner, according to InTransit, although there are only a few dozen cases of this, while the majority of Russian defectors remain in transit countries like Armenia.

According to Anastasia Burakova, founder of The Ark, an NGO that supports anti-war Russians living in exile, Estonia has already introduced a ban on issuing visas to Russians who fought against Ukraine. “Last summer, the Baltic and Nordic countries met to discuss such a measure. In general, this is a step towards individual, rather than collective, responsibility and an assessment of the risk to society. I think other EU countries may soon adopt this approach,” Burakova warned in January.

At the same time, The Ark and Get Lost are currently discussing proposals to allow exemptions for former Russian soldiers who have not committed war crimes and often did not even reach the front lines, as well as for those who left the country before being drafted, or were drafted against their will. “Such people often become key witnesses in war crimes investigations,” Burakov notes.

Abandoning an army that commits war crimes will over time be understood as a courageous moral stance, certainly, something demonstrated by the monuments that stand today in Hamburg, Cologne, Hanover and Vienna in honor of those who refused to serve in the Wehrmacht during the Nazi era.

"It would be good to treat people who refuse to fight against Ukraine right now," says Sverdlin, "instead of erecting monuments to them in 50 years."

The Geopost