Nowhere to Run- How Kazakhstan aids Russia’s crackdown on activists and deserters fleeing the Kremlin

Over the past few months, several Russian activists, military deserters, and anti-government voices have been extradited from Kazakhstan, or now find themselves facing that fate. These are the stories of Zelimkhan Murtazov, Yulia Yemelyanova, Mansur Movlayev, Semyon Bazhukov, and Alexander Kachkurkin, five such Russian citizens caught on the wrong side of the two countries’ close legal cooperation.

[Update: On April 20, after being stranded in Astana International Airport for 117 days, Chechen deserter Zelimkhan Murtazov finally received permission to depart Kazakhstan by plane for Armenia, where he plans to request political asylum.]

Perhaps nobody else in the world has ever been in quite the position that Zelimkhan Murtazov was in for the last 117 days. 

On the run from the Russian government, Zelimkhan was stuck in a transit zone of Astana International Airport, Kazakhstan’s capital, unable to enter the country and request political asylum. During his time there, he constantly faced the treat of deportation to Russia, which he said would likely result in imprisonment, torture, and death. 

The Chechen deserter, 37, previously served for two years in the Russian army and fought in Ukraine. In 2024, after fleeing military service, he traveled to Kazakhstan, one of four countries that have open borders for Russian citizens without international travel documents. 

Following an abortive effort to travel onwards to Turkey, where he says he was stripped of his ID card, Zelimkhan was sent back to Astana. There, border security guards denied him re-entry to Kazakhstan on “national security grounds.” 

Photo courtesy of Zelimkhan Murtazov.

Zelimkhan then spent nearly four months living in limbo in Astana’s airport, surviving off charitable donations from supporters around the world before eventually being allowed to travel to Armenia. His story — reminiscent of Tom Hanks’ fictitious one in The Terminal — revealed an important fact: Kazakhstan is no safe haven for Russian citizens trying to escape politically-motivated prosecution at home. 

In the best-case scenario, they can stay in Kazakhstan so long as they keep a low profile, uneasily building a home for themselves while unable to safely travel to third countries. 

In the worst-case, individuals are detained by Kazakhstan’s authorities and subjected to extradition proceedings that experts say do not always comply with due process guarantees, before being returned to Russia to face consequences unknown.

Moscow Calling 

Like Zelimkhan’s, the story of another Russian citizen facing deportation and politically motivated imprisonment back at home also begins at an airport.

Last August, a Russian activist named Yulia Yemelyanova had a layover in Almaty International Airport while flying from Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, to the coastal Vietnamese city of Da Nang.

When her flight landed, the 34-year-old was forced to leave the transfer hall to re-check her luggage, despite having been initially told that her bags would travel directly through to her final destination, according to her lawyer.

As Yulia entered customs, what might have otherwise been an inconvenience began to look more sinister. The activist was detained by Kazakhstani border security and transferred to a temporary holding center, after which local law enforcement said that they would make immediate preparations for her extradition to Russia.

The reason for Yulia’s detention soon became clear: Russian authorities had placed her on an international wanted list for the alleged theft of a telephone worth 12,000 rubles (about $150) from a taxi driver back in St. Petersburg, almost four years prior. 

Yulia Yemelyanova. Photo courtesy of Murat Adam.

Yulia had been on the authorities’ radar in her home country for some time, but her detention in Almaty marked a new chapter in her long-standing legal entanglement with Russian law enforcement.

According to Russian human rights organizations, Yulia had actively participated  in anti-government rallies in 2017 and had volunteered in St. Petersburg for the Navalny Headquarters, an activist group that organized protests, election monitoring, and anti-corruption advocacy in support of former opposition leader Alexey Navalny prior to being banned as “extremist” in 2021.

That same year, in September, police in St. Petersburg raided the activist’s home and rushed her to a nearby station while she was still in her nightgown. There, investigators presented her with a telephone that they claimed she had stolen, though she says it was the first time she had seen it.

According to both the Russian Antiwar Committee, a coalition of exiled Russian opposition figures and activists, and The Ark, a project supporting Russian emigrants who oppose the war in Ukraine, the Russian authorities’ case against Yulia was likely “politically motivated” and “fabricated.” 

Highlighting several procedural flaws — including the fact that the case was first opened a month after the alleged crime was committed — Yulia’s lawyer, Murat Adam, agreed:

“I’m certain that the charges were falsified. The victim himself, an immigrant from Tajikistan, was deported. It’s clear that [Russian authorities] pressured him, told him to do this and that, write a statement, and then they deported him so it would be impossible to find him,” Adam told Vlast.

[Since speaking with Vlast, Murat Adam was stripped of his attorney’s license for alleged violations unrelated to Yemelyanova’s case. He initially contested the decision, which was criticized by international legal associations, but lost his appeal on March 28.]

Fearing that the proceedings would be rigged against her, Yulia fled Russia before her trial was due to begin in July 2022, settling in Tbilisi. There, she took up work assisting Emigration for Action and Just Help, two human rights projects assisting Ukrainian refugees in Georgia. 

According to Adam, the activist likely did not realize that she had been designated as “wanted” and would not have expected to be detained in Kazakhstan while on the way to Vietnam. 

After being taken into custody by Kazakhstani authorities, Yulia was transferred to a pre-trial detention center on the outskirts of Almaty and submitted an application for asylum. 

In October, shortly after her detention, Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor General’s Office pledged that neither she nor any other Russian citizen would be deported while their asylum applications were under review, according to the Antiwar Committee. 

Catch and Release

In view of this promise, Yulia’s case appeared to be unfolding following a predictable pattern as last year came to a close.

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and its first significant mobilization the following September, Kazakhstan had become a major destination for Russian emigrants, known colloquially as relokanty. 

Not all left out of opposition to the war; some were simply glum about career prospects inside a sanctions-stricken Russian economy. But others, fleeing the long arm of the Kremlin, looked to Kazakhstan as a refuge or means of onward travel. 

“When Kazakhstan was being used as a transit route, it was a little safer. During the mobilization, many people left Russia and spent time in Kazakhstan, even if they had been targets of political persecution,” Margarita Kuchusheva from the Antiwar Committee told Vlast, recalling the early months of the war.

In some cases, Kazakhstan’s authorities received deportation requests targeting politically active relokanty. When that happened, they would typically be detained under extradition arrest while local prosecutors considered Russia’s petition. 

During this period, these detainees would apply for asylum, triggering a parallel legal process that prevented their expulsion from the country. 

The odds were never very favorable towards those seeking asylum, given the vanishingly small number of applicants granted refugee status by Kazakhstan. 

But the appeals process would often last for months, during which time would-be deportees could not legally be expelled from Kazakhstan. After one year, extradition arrests would expire, often allowing the detainees to leave for a third country. 

Such was the case with Buryatian journalist Yevgeniya Baltatarova, who arrived in Kazakhstan in March 2022 but was denied refugee status. Repeatedly arrested and barred from leaving the country due to outstanding charges in Russia, she was eventually allowed to leave Kazakhstan for France in early 2024, where she was granted asylum. 

Similarly, 21-year-old Russian anarchic activist Deniz Kozak was held in an Almaty pre-trial detention center for a year after being detained in February 2023, before receiving permission to travel to Europe in late March 2024. 

Kazakhstan’s treatment of asylum-seekers from other countries was little different. Several activists from Uzbekistan’s northern autonomous region of Karakalpakstan, accused of having caused unrest there, were previously subjected to lengthy detention in Kazakhstan before being eventually allowed to leave Kazakhstan. 

Karakalpak activist Akylbek Muratbai. Photo by Daniyar Mussirov.

According to legal experts closely following her case, these examples gave credence to the idea that Yulia would face similar treatment. 

“When Yulia was first arrested, we didn’t think it would be a huge problem,” Kuchusheva from the Antiwar Committee told Vlast. “Usually, [such people] would get released from custody after a year and could then leave the country.” 

“Of course, people would have to spend a year in a detention center, which is, to say the least, an unpleasant experience, but then they would be released and could relocate elsewhere,” Denis Zhivaga, director of the Almaty-based Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights (KIBHR), added.

More broadly, Kazakhstan’s ‘catch-and-release’ system made the country seem like a relative safe haven in Central Asia for Russians citizens hurriedly looking to leave home.

“Countries across the former Soviet Union, especially Kazakhstan, still cooperate quite closely with Russia, and our authorities have long prioritized inter-state cooperation in criminal matters. But compared to its neighbors, Kazakhstan had been relatively safe,” Zhivaga explained.

Change of Fortunes

In early 2026, however, Kazakhstan’s authorities suddenly dismantled the informal system of protection that Russians at odds with the Kremlin had previously enjoyed. 

A key moment came on January 29, when the Prosecutor General’s Office granted the Russian government’s extradition request for Yulia Yemelyanova and set the activist’s deportation process into motion.

The move came as a surprise, as it was issued before Kazakhstan’s courts had made a final ruling on Yulia’s application for asylum. 

Her request had initially been rejected in December 2025, but because her legal team was appealing the decision, the case should still have been under judicial review when her imminent deportation was announced at the end of January.

The decision, therefore, both departed from the usual practice of prolonged detention, and ran counter to the Prosecutor General’s Office’s earlier assurances that she would not be deported while her case was under review.

Beyond this, Yulia’s legal team was rankled by the manner in which the extradition decision was effectively made in secret. 

Both Adam and the Antiwar Committee told Vlast they had not received any notice from authorities that Russia’s extradition request had been approved, and were only notified by Yulia herself nearly two weeks after the fact, during a routine visit to the pre-trial detention center on February 11. 

Upon learning of Yulia’s fate, the activist’s lawyers immediately filed a complaint with Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court. Adam, for his part, made the argument that, according to “both domestic legislation and the norms of international law,” the Russian activist had the right to remain in the country while Kazakhstani courts were still considering her asylum appeal. 

Facing the prospect of deportation, Yulia wrote that she had lost her appetite, was struggling to sleep, and was “literally dying of fear” in a series of letters published by Novaya Gazeta Europe, an independent Russian media outlet. 

“Even now, after four valerian tablets, another magnesium tablet, and a calming tea, my hands are shaking, and I am desperately fighting back tears. Dark thoughts are coming into my head,” reads one letter, whose authenticity was confirmed to Vlast by a representative of the Antiwar Committee.

“Extradition sometimes seems worse than death to me. Because [if I am extradited], every day I will die from the tyranny of injustice and the loss of my future,” she wrote in another.

Banned, on the Run

Beyond those involving Yulia, several other developments at the end of January served to demonstrate Kazakhstan’s dramatic change of tack toward Russian nationals wanted in their home country.

In one incident, Alexander Kachkurkin, an IT specialist and native of Crimea who had lived in Almaty for several years, was summarily deported from Kazakhstan on January 28 — the very day he was detained by local police in Almaty for “jaywalking” and “smoking a hookah indoors.”

According to First Department, a Russian human rights NGO, after arresting Alexander, Almaty police filed a report demanding his urgent deportation on the grounds that he had “disrespected the sovereignty of the Republic of Kazakhstan.”

Within hours, Alexander was flown to Russia, where he was arrested upon arrival on suspicion of treason, a crime for which he could face life imprisonment. He has since been designated by Memorial, the Russian Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights organization, as a political prisoner. 

“Usually, when someone gets arrested, news would reach us — even if indirectly. But with Kachkurkin, it was very secretive, and we only found out about him when [Russian] journalists began writing that he had been extradited,” KIBHR’s Zhivaga told Vlast. 

In another case, a Russian deserter named Semyon Bazhukov was detained and clandestinely handed over by law enforcement in Kazakhstan’s central Karaganda region to Russian military police. This took place despite his having repeatedly requested asylum, according to Russian anti-war activist group Get Lost, which helps Russian citizens avoid conscription and flee from military service. 

“Having fled a kidnapping attempt, Semyon was at a police station in Karaganda district with a lawyer from the KIBHR when Russian military police arrived,” Alexey Alshansky, coordinator for Farewell to Arms, another project assisting Russian deserters, told Vlast.

“He had submitted a second request for asylum — he’d made another request months prior — and right then and there, the Russian military police took him away, without any official authorization,” Alshansky said. “We haven’t had any contact with him since then.” 

Document certifying Semyon Bazhukov’s status as an asylum-seeker. Photo courtesy of Farewell to Arms.

A third case to give onlookers pause came on January 29, when Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor General’s Office approved the Russian government’s extradition request for Mansur Movlayev, a 29-year-old activist from Chechnya.

A long-time critic of the Russian region’s strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, Mansur was sentenced to three years in prison in 2020 on charges widely condemned by human rights groups as politically motivated. 

In 2022, Mansur was released on parole, but was later kidnapped by Chechen security forces, who allegedly brought him to one of the region’s infamous secret prisons, where he claims he was tortured. In 2023, he managed to escape and eventually made his way to Kazakhstan, where he lived until being arrested in May 2025.

Like Yulia, Mansur had applied for asylum, had been denied, and was contesting his rejected application when Russia’s request for his extradition was greenlit by the Prosecutor General’s Office. 

He also wrote a letter from pre-trial detention, appealing for “every possible form of support” from the people of Kazakhstan to prevent his deportation. 

“In 1944, you saved my people — today, you can help save my life,” he wrote, invoking Kazakhstan’s role in sheltering Chechens during the Stalin-era Soviet deportations.

False Dawn

With Kazakhstan’s new attitude towards on-the-run Russians increasingly apparent, Mansur’s lawyer, Elena Zhigalenok, took her complaints to Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court on February 24, arguing that Mansur’s extradition should have been suspended until his asylum claim had been fully reviewed by the country’s judicial system.

The day before the case was reviewed, the UN Human Rights Committee requested that Kazakhstan not extradite Mansur until his complaint had been “fully examined.” His legal team noted that such requests are usually made only when there is a risk of serious harm, such as threats to life or torture.

Although it is unclear what role the UN Human Rights Committee’s intervention played, the Supreme Court ultimately upheld Zhigalenok’s arguments, suspending Mansur’s extradition pending the resolution of his ongoing legal proceedings.

“The detention of Mansur Movsarovich Movlaev is to be extended until a final decision is reached on whether to grant him refugee status, but for no less than one month,” Judge Madeniet Omarbekova said, announcing the verdict.

Two days later, the Prosecutor General’s Office also halted Yulia’s extradition proceedings, appearing to anticipate a similar outcome if her appeal reached the country’s highest court.

Yulia and Mansur’s legal teams had won, but their victories were extremely short-lived. Within days, both had their asylum appeals rejected, effectively reopening the risk of extradition, pending final appeals.

Mansur Movlayev. Photo courtesy of his lawyer.

In Yulia’s case, her lawyer, Adam, said the appeal hearing was marred by irregularities, including the court’s failure to consider an urgent submission from UN Special Rapporteur Mariana Katzarova without explanation.

“In all my practice, this is the first time I have ever encountered a situation where a case was heard in the absence of the plaintiff’s representatives, and where such a demonstrative disregard was shown for the norms of UN international conventions ratified by our country,” Adam wrote following the ruling. 

“It would appear that international law is no longer being taken into account when considering cases of this kind,” he concluded.

Commenting on both cases, Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor General’s Office told local journalists that it saw no risk for either Yulia or Mansur in the event of their extradition from Kazakhstan.

“All of their [their] arguments and materials have been reviewed. We have requested appropriate guarantees from our Russian colleagues, which we have received,” deputy Prosecutor General, Galymzhan Koigeldiyev, said.

February 27 court ruling announcing the rejection of Yulia Yemelyanova’s asylum request appeal. Photo courtesy of Russian Antiwar Committee.

What’s Next

Both Yulia and Mansur’s lawyers confirmed to Vlast that they plan to continue appealing their asylum rejections, especially given that Kazakhstan’s obligations under international human rights treaties should offer the pair more protections than they have so far received. 

“I personally believe Kazakhstan’s authorities are violating several international conventions that the country has ratified, including the Convention against Torture and the Refugee Convention,” lawyer Zhigalenok told Vlast. 

According to Murat, this is true in the cases of Yulia and Mansur, as well as “others already deported back to Russia.”

Whether any future legal appeal will succeed, however, is doubtful — the KIBHR reports that no Russian citizen has received refugee status in Kazakhstan since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Additionally, Kazakhstan’s broader legal context further darkens the picture. While the country’s current Constitution gives international law formal precedence over domestic legislation, the new Basic Law approved in the March 15 referendum effectively removes this requirement — something both Adam and Zhigalenok criticized sharply. 

“We are moving backwards, signaling hostility toward international organizations and treaties. Removing the primacy of international law [over domestic law] will make us more like the Russian Federation, like North Korea, like Turkmenistan — where only authoritarian rule prevails,” Adam said.

And yet, despite its new Constitution and the government’s increasingly hardline approach towards would-be relokanty, Kazakhstan remains an attractive option for those with few other places to turn. The country’s geographic proximity, linguistic familiarity, and ease of entry continue to draw in Russian arrivals, especially as humanitarian visa policies tighten in the West.

For Zelimkhan, who spent nearly four months living in an airport terminal while trying to enter Kazakhstan in order to request asylum, options were severely limited while routes to third countries remained closed.

“I’d rather sort things out here and find a way to get out, either to Europe, which would be the best option. In Russia, I’ll face either death or torture because I left the army. If I’m sent back home now, that’s it — my story ends,” Zelimkhan said while in the airport.

Featured image: Daniyar Mussirov

This article was originally published in Vlast.kz on 8 April 2026.