German authorities have approved 55 asylum applications from Russian citizens who fled the country due to mobilization. 88 such applications have been rejected, and more than one and a half thousand are still under review. This is reported by Redaktions Netzwerk Deutschland with reference to the data of the German Ministry of Internal Affairs, the publication was reported by the channel “Nastoyastchee Vremya”.
In total, from the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine until the end of April 2023, 2,485 Russian citizens who left for fear of being mobilized applied for asylum. At the end of April, decisions were made on 814 applications: 671 Russians were informed by the German authorities that their applications should be considered by the countries of first entry into the European Union.
In September last year, after the announcement of mobilization in Russia, a number of German ministers announced that Germany would grant temporary asylum to Russian citizens avoiding mobilization. “Desectors who are threatened with serious repression can receive international protection in Germany,” said the country’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Nancy Feser.
At the same time, several EU countries, for example, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Latvia, opposed providing protection to evaders. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic Jan Lipavsky stated that the refusal to comply with the legal requirements of the state does not meet the conditions for issuing a humanitarian visa.
According to the head of the government of Estonia Kai Kallas, the country will not grant asylum to Russian men, because they “must come forward [внутри России] and declare that they are against this war.” Head of the Foreign Ministry of Latvia, Edgar Rynkevich reportedthat the country will not issue visas to defectors “for safety reasons.”
The Scandinavian countries and Finland, which are part of the EU, asked for clarification on the question of whether evasion is a sufficient basis for asylum in the European Union. In May, the Finnish public television and radio company Yle reported that without the formulated position of the European Union, Helsinki could not make a decision to grant asylum to 1,109 Russians. The total number of such submitted applications in all EU countries was not disclosed.