“This is kidnapping.” Russian security forces found a deserter in Astana, took him to a military base in the desert, and then to Omsk

In May, Kazakhstani human rights activists reported the detention of 23-year-old Russian Kamil Kasimov, who did not want to participate in the war against Ukraine, fled from his missile unit and settled in Astana. In mid-August, a military court in Omsk sentenced him to 6 years of maximum security prison for desertion in wartime. Mediazona found out that the young man was captured on the territory of Kazakhstan by criminal investigations operatives from Buryatia and taken to Russia bypassing the legal procedures of deportation and extradition.

The father of Kamil Kasimov from Tyumen died in 2014, when the boy was 13 and his brother Shamil was 17. Their mother Zulfiya worked as a seamstress in a clothing repair shop, and the family was always short of money. After school, Kamil enrolled in a technical school to study graphic design, but could not find a job. In the summer of 2021, he signed a two-year contract with the Ministry of Defence. The pay was promised to be about 30,000 roubles.

“We are not a rich family, we are very poor, I have been earning little my whole life,” says Zulfiya. “30,000 is not particulary big money either, of course, so I think he signed the contract mostly because of his friends, he agreed to do it with his friends. I suspect that his friend told him something like: ‘Come on, let’s go and serve [in the army], at least it’s gonna be something exciting.’ He just wanted to serve with his friends, they wanted to go to a military unit somewhere far away, to the Far East or somewhere else.”

Neither Zulfiya nor her son had any idea that Russia would launch a full-scale war against Ukraine in six months’ time—they weren’t much into politics. Kasimov was sent to Ulan-Ude, to the training centre of the 103rd Rocket Brigade, which is armed with Iskander missile systems.

The units of this brigade were among the first to be moved to the western borders of Russia, a month before the full-scale invasion began. By May 2022, the number of missiles fired at Ukraine from the territory of Belarus had already reached 600. Kasimov probably served in Belarus as well. Kamil never told his mother anything, but he was soon promoted from private to sergeant and given the status of a combat veteran.

According to Zulfiya, after the war began, her son was forced to sign a second contract, although the first one had not yet ended, this time for three years.

“They told him that since we trained you, since you know how these machines work, then you should work for us,” and slipped him this second contract. He signed it, but they didn’t even give him a copy, a second copy. He didn’t want to go to war, he wasn’t planning to fight,” Kasimova said. The woman claims her son's sentiments were known to the unit commander, who, according to her, even threatened Kamil: “If you run away, I’ll break your legs.”

“He would say, ‘Mum, I’m not going back there.’ What was there, he didn’t tell me, I don’t even know if he was on Ukrainian territory. But I think he was afraid, he wanted to live, so he decided to do what he did. At first he was considering hiding somewhere in Tyumen. I explained to him that he would be found then. They will find you anyway, I said, Kamil, you understand, sooner or later they will find you! So he did it his own way,” says the soldier’s mother.

Until 20 June, when his leave ended, Kasimov was free to move around the country. He did not turn to Russian human rights organisations that help deserters, such as the Get Lost project. Instead, on 11 June he reached Minsk and from there he flew to Astana.

In Kazakhstan, Kasimov decided to go legal: he registered an IIN, obtained a temporary residence permit and got a job in a civilian profession: started working in a printing house.

Soon his older brother Shamil moved in with him. Just in case, Kamil contacted human rights defenders from the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law (KIBHR).

The bureau’s lawyer, Artur Alkhastov, said that until recently Kazakhstan was considered a safe country for Russians who did not want to take part in the war. The Criminal Code’s articles on offences against military service are not extraditable, he explained: even when Russia puts a deserter on an interstate wanted list, local law enforcement officials, after detaining and checking him, must release him if he has not violated local law.

Until recently, there was only one known case of forced return of a Russian deserter from Kazakhstan. This happened to 36-year-old Major Mikhail Zhilin of the FSO. Unlike Kasimov, he crossed the border by forest and hoped to receive political asylum. However, the fugitive was prosecuted in Kazakhstan for illegal migration and deported to Russia by court order in December 2022. The Barnaul garrison military court sentenced Zhilin to 6.5 years in a strict regime colony under articles on desertion in conditions of military conflict and illegal border crossing.

The Kazakhstani court also ordered the deportation of Igor Sanjiev, a 47-year-old labourer from Kalmykia. After being mobilised, he fled the unit twice: first to Belarus, from where he was returned to Russia, and later to Kazakhstan. Like Zhilin, Sanjiev applied for political asylum, was refused and became a defendant in a case of illegal border crossing. However, he has not yet been extradited to the Russian security forces: he is challenging his deportation in the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan.

The estimate of deserters from Russia in the country is dozens, Artur Alkhastov said. KIBHR is reliably aware of at least 15 Russian servicemen who remain in Kazakhstan, but not all fugitives seek help, so the real number could be much higher. Zhilin’s case has not alerted local human rights activists enough, the lawyer admits.

“Although I don’t agree with the decision that was made on Zhilin, it fits into the legal framework. He had a court decision on expulsion, although, in my opinion, with violations - but still a document with a signature, a document of the authorities. He had the opportunity to apply for refugee status and even to challenge the refusal. Everything was within the law,” Alkhastov explains.

A trip to Priozersk

Everything changed on 23 April 2024. About a month before that, Kamil Kasimov had found a new job—at a building materials factory in Astana. His workplace was in a pass-through room, Zulfiya explains, so her son didn't even pay attention when several unfamiliar men in civilian clothes appeared there.

“They approached, he didn’t even realise they were coming to him. Come with us, they say, with us, young man. They grabbed him by the arm and took him away,” says Kamil's mother.

From work, he was taken to the police department of the capital’s Almaty district, and from there to the military commandant’s office at the Russian base in the Kazakhstani town of Priozersk.

The closed city of Priozersk is located in the Hungry Steppe (Betpak-Dala) Desert on the shores of Lake Balkhash. It serves as the administrative centre for the Sary Shagan missile test site and Kambala military airfield leased by Russia, and two Russian military units are stationed here. Priozersk even has its own military court - the 40th Garrison Court. This is the only court of Russian jurisdiction that is actually located abroad. Judge Pavel Dyakov has been presiding over it for ten years now.

From the commandant’s office in Priozersk, Kasimov was able to call his mother and told her that the men in civilian clothes who showed up at his workplace were police officers—some Kazakh and some Russian. After questioning him at the district office, the Kazakh law enforcers formally ‘released’ him, while their Russian colleagues summoned a driver through the InDrive service and drove the fugitive 750 kilometres to a military base in the desert.

The participation of Russians in the detention of Kasimov is confirmed by the Astana Police Department in its response to the KIBP inquiry.

As follows from the document, “during the period from 19 to 28 April 2024, officers of the Department of Internal Affairs of Russia in the Republic of Buryatia were on a business trip on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan.” Together with police officers from Astana, they “identified” a wanted deserter.

“Сitizen K. M. Kasimov was interviewed in writing by policemen for the Almaty District and released from the police office of the Almaty District, the collected materials with a covering letter were sent by mail to the initiator of the search,” reads the letter signed by the deputy head of the CDPD of Astana Askat Isenov.

“In connection with the measure of restraint in the form of subscription on not leaving, as well as in connection with the fact that Art. 338 part. 3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation refers to military offences, the issue of extradition was not considered,” Isenov stressed.

What happened to the young man next and how he ended up in Priozersk, the Kazakh police did not specify.

“They write: yes, there was a detention, he was taken to the police station, questioned, and then released by Kazakhstani law enforcers. And that’s kind of where the letter ends. That is, there was no extradition, and as if, according to their logic, we let him go, he left, and we are not quite aware of what happened behind the fence. I can only interpret it in this way,” says Artur Alkhastov.

On 17 May, the human rights defender told the independent Russian media outlet iStories about Kasimov’s abduction. The news was picked up by other media, and a fellow countryman began to be discussed in Tyumen. Both opponents and supporters of the war got very emotional commenting on the issue.

“We live in a small town, everyone understands who we are talking about by the surname. And on the one hand, he is bad that he ran away from the war, and on the other hand—everyone gloated that he went to earn money for the SMO. It was his own fault! Although he signed a contract before the war, he didn’t go to the SMO, he didn't know it would start,” Zulfiya recalls.

According to his mother, the next time Kamil contacted her was only at the end of June. An investigator briefly handed him the phone. The young man managed to say that he was in a military unit in Omsk, a criminal case of desertion had been opened against him and a preventive measure in the form of observation by the unit command. He asked his mother not to spend money on a lawyer and said that he was represented by a defence counsel by appointment.

How Kamil Kasimov got from Priozersk to Omsk is unknown.

“Legally there was no procedure, we can only guess here. In fact, this is kidnapping. This is a direct violation of the obligations that Kazakhstan has. It is written in our Constitution that the highest value is a human being, his rights and freedoms. And Kamil Kasimov was not given the opportunity to use them. He was not allowed to ask for refugee status, to go through the extradition procedure, the decision on which should be made by the Prosecutor General’s Office and which can be appealed in court. He was deprived of all his rights. Since nothing indicates that it had any legal framework, it is kidnapping,” summarises human rights defender Alkhastov.

Sentencing in Omsk

On August 13, the 40th Garrison Military Court passed a sentence on Kamil Kasimov. For this purpose, the chairman of the court, Dyakov, travelled a distance of one and a half thousand kilometres—the session was held in the Omsk garrison military court. He found Kasimov guilty under the article on “desertion during an ongoing military conflict” and sentenced him to 6 years in a strict regime colony.

Kasimov fully admitted his guilt. The court considered the status of a veteran of military operations in Ukraine as a mitigating circumstance. After the verdict, the young man was taken into custody, now he is in the Detention Centre No. 1 in Omsk (the letter sent by Mediazona to Kasimov was handed over to the addressee).

“As far as I understood, this term is the minimum, so we were glad that it was not 15 years. And that’s all, and they shut up—they didn’t appeal anything, but maybe they should have,” Zulfiya, the mother of the convict, argues. “Is it possible for a young man, who even took part in combat operations, who even has an award, to be sued like this and sent to prison?”

At the same time, the text of the verdict does not make it clear how exactly the security forces found the fugitive and how he was transported from Kazakhstan to Russia. It only says that Lieutenant Colonel Efimov from the criminal investigation “in the course of search operations established the location” of Kasimov in Astana and “delivered” him to the military commandant’s office in Priozersk on April 24.

“That is, he was caught, given into the hands of the Russian military, hidden on the territory of the military base, and then somehow he was secretly taken to the territory of Russia without the possibility of defence. He was kidnapped. This is the first such case in Kazakhstan, of course, when, without defence counsel, without any procedure, they just took him, took him away and then gave him a sentence,” says Artur Alkhastov.

Officially, Kasimov’s sentence has not been announced to him for over a month. Mediazona submitted multiple requests to Omsk, Ulan-Ude, 2nd Military District and 40th Garrison Military Courts for several weeks, trying to find out the fate of the deserter, but the press services either did not answer or wrote that the case against a person with such a name had not been submitted to the court.

Officially, Kasimov’s sentence has not been announced to him for over a month. Mediazona submitted multiple requests to Omsk, Ulan-Ude, 2nd Military District and 40th Garrison Military Courts for several weeks, trying to find out the fate of the deserter, but the press services either did not answer or wrote that the case against a person with such a name had not been submitted to the court.

Kasimov’s case file was only published on the website of the 40th Garrison Military Court on September 23. It shows that Kasimov’s case was received by the court on the 5th of August, and its consideration together with the verdict took only one day. The prosecution was represented by Nikolai Golubev, assistant prosecutor from the military prosecutor’s office of the Strategic Missile Forces. His place of service on the website of the court is designated as military unit No. 56681, this section of the military prosecutor’s office is located in Novosibirsk.

Why, of all the Russian deserters hiding in Kazakhstan, law enforcers chose Kasimov, we can only guess, Alkhastov said.

“At one of my colleagues from another human rights organisation, it is forbidden to discuss logic in the actions of the Russian authorities during their work meetings. Because there often isn’t any. There is a certain indiscriminate approach. Perhaps he was simply easier to spot, perhaps he was of particular value to them because of his service in the missile forces, perhaps it was all the initiative of a separate department of the Buryatia Interior Ministry. We have given up all attempts to guess. It is also unclear why they came to his workplace, according to my information, he had not worked there officially yet. Clearly, there was some method of operative-search work. We even suspect in such cases some Russian services, such as Yandex or Sberbank's apps,” the human rights defender said.

According to him, the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights is now developing a new security protocol for defectors remaining in the country.

“Obviously, it has become much more unsafe to stay in Kazakhstan. Therefore, appropriate measures are also needed,” he said.

Editors: Yegor Skovoroda, Dmitry Tkachev

Translator: Anna-Maria Tesfaye