BBC: Six Russian deserters who fled to Kazakhstan were able to obtain European visas. They reached France and requested asylum

Six Russian military personnel who deserted from the army and left for Kazakhstan were approved for European entry documents in May 2024, writes the BBC Russian Service. By October 11, they had all reached France and began the process of applying for asylum.

Human rights activists who help them with this, and the military themselves, told journalists how Russian deserters with an anti-war position are seeking the opportunity to leave for Europe.

One of the six deserters who was able to leave for France is Anton (his name has been changed in the material), who stayed in Ukraine for about six months (he served even before the start of the full-scale invasion of Russian troops). Anton was able to go on vacation at the end of August 2022, and as soon as mobilization was announced in Russia, he left for Kazakhstan. There he met the lawyer of the Kazakhstan Bureau for Human Rights, Artur Alkhastov, and together with him began helping other Russian deserters.

Lawyers, investigators and human rights activists in Kazakhstan are verifying the stories of Russians who escaped from the army, checking whether they are involved in war crimes, and the organizations Russie Liberté, inTransit and the Conscious Objector Movement in France and Germany, for their part, are trying to negotiate with the European authorities on extradition such people need entry documents.

The remaining five of the six deserters who received European entry documents, as the BBC Russian Service writes, did not have time to visit Ukraine. Among them, according to Artur Alkhastov, there are career officers and two mobilized ones. He calls the issuance of entry documents to them the first such mass case that has become known, but emphasizes that there are still many Russian military personnel who fled the army in Kazakhstan.

According to the founder of the “Go Through the Forest” project, Grigory Sverdlin, there are now hundreds of Russian deserters in Armenia and Kazakhstan. Both countries are considered unsafe - there are known cases when deserters from Russia were detained there by Russian security forces.