Russian Deserters: EU Country Grants Six Entry

Orda.kz reports, citing the BBC, that this is the first known case in which an EU country has agreed to issue entry documents to the former Russian military personnel.

Six Russian deserters who fled to Kazakhstan have been granted entry into France. By early October, they had reached the country and begun applying for asylum. 

After Russia's war against Ukraine began, Kazakhstan, which can be entered with an internal Russian passport, became one destination for many Russians, including political activists.

After mobilization was announced, those who could have been sent to the front set off for Kazakhstan. Among them were those who had already been mobilized and career military personnel.

In Astana, such people receive aid from Artur Alkhastov, a human rights activist and lawyer of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights (KIBR).

Alkhastov began to verify Russian deserters who approached him and other human rights activists for help, looking into their stories to ensure that they were not Russian security forces sent into the country and, if they were indeed defecting soldiers, that they had not committed war crimes.

Those suspected of committing war crimes have no chance of getting entry visas to EU countries.

After the war began, some European countries, such as Germany and France, began issuing humanitarian visas to Russians with anti-war stances facing persecution at home. Russian deserters cannot receive such visas, however.

Deserters in Europe usually arrived illegally or with existing travel documents.

For over a year now, human rights activists from different countries have been trying to reach an agreement with European authorities to start issuing entry documents to deserters with an anti-war position who are not suspected of war crimes. In Germany, InTransit engages in this, and in France, the human rights association Russie-Libertés.

Russie-Libertés President Olga Prokopyeva calls deserters abandoned. She says human rights activists have been trying to develop a system to help those who are most at risk in CSTO countries and not suspected of committing war crimes in Ukraine.

In 2023, France's National Court of Asylum ruled that deserters from the Russian army and Russians who fled mobilization could receive refugee status.

As AFP reported in June 2024, the court has since granted such status to 102 Russians who fled mobilization, but there were no deserters among them. Asylum can only be applied for in France, and deserters cannot get there without international passports.

Attempts by human rights activists to negotiate with European authorities on visas for Russian deserters remained unsuccessful until last spring.

Gradually, the number of deserting Russian soldiers in Kazakhstan increased. Last summer, deserters from the Russian army decided to launch the "Farewell to Arms" project to show other Russian soldiers that they had an alternative.

In Kazakhstan, the "Farewell to Arms" members were at risk of detention and deportation to Russia. Criminal cases have been opened against them in their homeland.

In May of this year, it became known that six participants of "A Farewell to Arms" had been approved for European entry documents.

Of course, these are not all deserters in Kazakhstan, but this is the first such big case - six people at once. We started fighting for this back in 2022, and now, finally, there have been some, albeit partial, successes,
 says Alkhastov.

Human rights activists knew of only one case before this. After the start of the war, a Russian deserter was able to obtain a European visa in Kazakhstan and leave the country.

Of the six people approved for entry this spring, only one had been to Ukraine; the rest were career officers, and two had been mobilized, Alkhastov says.

The six cases are the first small successes for human rights activists who work with European authorities on the issue of deserters, says Prokopyeva of Russie-Libertés.

She believes these cases are exceptional, emphasizing the clearly expressed, consistent position of the deserters as an essential component, not the desertion itself.

Original Author: Rimma Karataeva