A deserter’s desert

“Hundreds of thousands of fighters from the aggressor state have taken part in this brutal war, committing atrocities and violence,” Tsahkna wrote, adding that they had “no place” in Estonia or the wider Schengen area. “We will keep working to ensure the door stays closed to Russian ex-combatants, and we call on other countries to do the same.”

Asked to clarify whether the ban would also apply to those who had deserted from the Russian military, Estonia’s Interior Ministry confirmed that it would indeed. Estonian officials say they regard anyone who fought in the Russian military as a potential security risk, noting that participants in the war in Ukraine are often traumatised, frequently have criminal records, may be hostile to Europe and European values, and could be vulnerable to recruitment by the Russian intelligence services.

How many desert?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Russian Defence Ministry does not publish statistics on desertion. Independent investigators and human rights groups rely on indirect data, but believe that the real figures may be significantly higher than even those figures.

In May 2025, Russian investigative outlet IStories published research suggesting that from the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine until the end of 2024, around 49,000 cases of desertion or going AWOL from military units had been recorded. These estimates broadly align with figures from the Ukrainian OSINT project Frontelligence Insight.

Other analysts believe the true scale is far larger, however. According to Alexey Alshansky, who works for A Farewell to Arms, a French-based monitoring project founded by deserters from the Russian military, most existing databases are incomplete and irregularly updated.

In August, investigative journalism outlet The Insider reported that since the beginning of the war, 18,470 people in Russia had been convicted for desertion or going AWOL, figures that did not include sentences handed down by courts in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

Novaya Gazeta Europe spoke to Get Lost, a project that helps conscripts and soldiers avoid deployment or to desert from the front, and InTransit, which assists Russians fleeing domestic political persecution to leave the country, and asked them about the options for those fleeing military service in Russia in 2026.

Blocking off the Baltic

“Estonia’s decision didn’t come as a surprise. It’s just another legal step,” InTransit told Novaya Europe. “Back in the summer, the Nordic countries and the Baltics said they wouldn’t admit Russian participants in the special military operation, including deserters. The first such statements to this effect were made as early as 2022.”

InTransit noted the common use of so-called “pushback” — forcing people back across the border they’ve just traversed. “These countries share borders with Russia and Belarus, and their migration services can simply return someone even if they’ve already applied for asylum. Lithuania has even enshrined this practice in law, so it’s not just rogue behaviour by border guards. For deserters, the Baltics are extremely difficult places. Most try not to stay there.”

Ivan Chuvilyaev of Get Lost said that he didn’t know of “a single case of someone fleeing to Estonia”, but that he did know various cases in which Russians had swum across the Neman River to reach Lithuania where they then surrendered to border guards.

“There was one deserter who fled to Belarus, crossed into Lithuania and applied for asylum there. He was left in limbo for a very long time. Lithuania doesn’t extradite deserters to Russia, but it doesn’t want to grant them residence permits either.”

“When we advise people, we always say: the Baltic states are not places where a Russian deserter can realistically expect to be granted asylum,” Chuvilyaev said.

Escape routes

According to Chuvilyaev, around 60% of the people Get Lost assist remain in Russia and simply go into hiding, though this isn’t usually a long-term solution. “You can hide for a while, but sooner or later you’ll be found — stopped by traffic police, pressured through relatives, or something else will go wrong.”

The other 40% go principally to Armenia or Kazakhstan, two countries that Russian citizens are able to enter using their internal passports, an important advantage given that many Russians don’t have passports valid for international travel.

Less frequently, those with savings will head to South America, typically to Argentina or Bolivia. “In many Latin American countries, drug use is decriminalised, so when deserters submit criminal record certificates for residence permits, those convictions are effectively ignored,” Chuvilyaev said.

“In the EU, that’s impossible: not only did he serve time, not only was it for drugs, but the certificate explicitly states he was released from prison because he enlisted in the army. That’s a complete dead end,” Chuvilyaev says, adding that reaching the EU is extremely rare and very difficult. “You can count on your fingers the number of people who make it to Europe and manage to legalise their status.”

Oases in Europe

“In the EU, there are really only two or three countries that deal with Russian deserters more or less reasonably: France, Germany, and, to some extent, Spain,” InTransit told Novaya Europe, adding that although those three countries didn’t routinely reject asylum applications, there had still only been dozens of successful cases, rather than hundreds.

While the EU has a directive that grants any soldier from an aggressor state who refuses to participate in military aggression the right to apply for asylum in Europe, that obviously doesn’t apply to countries outside the EU such as Armenia, Georgia, Montenegro or Türkiye, none of which have a mechanism to grant asylum to Russian deserters, which is why so many are trying to reach the EU.

According to Chuvilyaev, “every European country has its own specific situation”, for example, if a deserter doesn’t have a criminal record, they’ll have a relatively good chance of getting a residence permit for Finland, which does accept deserters.

“France grants asylum partly because it has centuries of immigration history — so many migrants from all over the world that one more or one less hardly matters. The UK is similar in attitude, though it’s much harder to reach. It’s not Schengen, not the EU, it’s an island — you can’t just walk in.”

“We recently had a client who crossed the Channel by boat from Dunkirk, reached the UK and applied for asylum there. He’s now living in a camp, waiting for them to make a decision in his case. So far, things look relatively positive — at least he’s not facing extradition.”

Transit points

Though Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia are all very convenient escape routes for Russian citizens as each allows entry with an internal passport, Get Lost is quick to point out that their rights once they’re there are virtually nonexistent.

“Kazakhstan is particularly unsafe and the authorities do extradite people at Russia’s request. Armenia is safer: you can usually get permission to stay. But it’s not always long term, and for a 40-year-old Russian man, there are limited job prospects.”

Russians finding themselves stuck in a transit country without a foreign passport are becoming an increasingly common phenomenon, InTransit says. “The vast majority are in Armenia. There are huge numbers of deserters and other Russians who left without foreign passports. Human rights groups estimate anything from several hundred to 1,000 deserters — but they’re only the ones who have come into contact with NGOs. Many don’t, so the real number could already be in the thousands.”

“Overall, Europe’s attitude towards Russian deserters and other asylum seekers is becoming noticeably harsher than it was in the first year of the war. In Germany, for example, the Merz government has attempted to crack down on asylum, and the authorities are assessing asylum claims less sympathetically and refusing them more often.”