Russian deportee in Berlin fights deportation to Poland

A 25-year-old Russian conscientious objector has claimed church asylum near Berlin after a city court ordered his deportation to Poland.

The man, identified only as Nikita R, fled his home near Novosibirsk three days before Russia invaded Ukraine last year. He secured a work visa and was living and working in Poland when his call-up papers arrived at his father’s address in Russia last August.

With relatives in Ukraine he refuses to fight. After experiencing anti-Russian sentiment in Poland, and fearing deportation back to Russia by the authorities there, Nikita moved to Berlin, where his mother lives.

“I just want to find work and lead a normal life,” said Nikita R.

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Last Thursday, Berlin’s administrative court dismissed his asylum application, ruling that the European Union Dublin III asylum rules make Poland responsible for his case, as it was the first EU member state he entered.

While no official statistics exist, Warsaw human rights groups say very few Russian soldiers and conscientious objectors have been granted asylum in Poland.

While the United Nations has collected evidence of widespread Russian war crimes – including summary executions – Poland’s asylum procedures demand concrete proof that an asylum applicant was persecuted or evidence that the unit in which the applicant would have served has committed war crimes.

Last year Germany promised a pragmatic approach on conscientious objectors.

“I am in favour of offering these people protection,” said chancellor Olaf Scholz. His interior minister Nancy Faeser agreed: “Anyone who courageously opposes the regime of president Vladimir Putin and therefore puts himself in the greatest danger can apply for asylum in Germany because of political persecution.”

Her interior ministry, responding to written questions, said Russian deserters and conscientious objectors were entitled to apply for asylum, but that they had no statics on how many such cases had been successful.

For Nikita R’s Berlin’s lawyer Christiane Meusel, Germany’s approach is “unbelievably cheeky”.

“The politicians say these things in public when, in the background, the procedures are organised so this cannot be delivered,” Ms Meusel told The Irish Times. “It is hypocritical to send weapons to Ukraine while also returning Russians, through chain deportations, to be Putin’s cannon fodder.”

The 25-year-old is now living in church asylum east of Berlin; if German authorities fail to deport him within six months, the Dublin rules transfer asylum responsibility for his case from Poland to Germany.

Figures from last September 2022 estimate at least 150,000 deserters and conscientious objectors have left Russia. If caught, they face at least six years in prison or forced recruitment. Nikita’s uncle was forced out of prison and into the Wagner mercenary group and was killed in Bachmut in January. Nikita says a close friend of was also been killed in action.

Last February the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding EU member states do more to provide pragmatic solutions for Russian deserters and conscientious objectors.

“We have to get away from case-by-case decisions towards a more structured approach,” said Udo Bullmann, a German MEP and chair of the parliamentary subcommittee on human rights. “In cases such as these I find it oppressive and misplaced for authorities to point to Dublin III.”

The EU has no clear binding guidelines on how to deal with deserters and conscientious objectors. An EU directive from 2011 extends protection to those who evade a war or actions that violate international law, and who are at risk for persecution – but has not established fundamental protection. In a 2020 ruling involving a conscientious objector from Syria, the European Court of Justice said it was “irrelevant that the person concerned does not know his future military area of operation”.

German organisation Connection, which supports conscientious objectors worldwide, says applications for asylum “are not sufficiently protected” in Germany and around Europe.