According to the Lithuanian authorities, the serviceman himself agreed to return.
On June 15, Lithuania deported a young deserter from Russia to Kaliningrad. The project Slovo Zashchite reported this, citing unnamed sources.
It is claimed that the serviceman fled to Lithuania "directly from the war with Ukraine." It is not specified when exactly this happened. The deserter did not have a foreign passport. In Lithuania, he requested asylum but was refused. After returning to Russia, the young man was detained. What is happening to him now is unknown.
Lithuania's State Border Guard Service (VSAT) stated that the Russian deserter himself отказался от дальнейшего рассмотрения прошения об убежище and agreed to return to his homeland. Representatives of the agency told LRT this.
According to the service, the decision to send the man to the Russian Federation was based on "his own wish." It added that the man was detained on December 29 for illegally crossing the border. For this, he was punished with nearly five months of imprisonment.
The Russian citizen did not file his asylum application immediately after detention, but only several months later, while serving his sentence. On May 19, he was released and placed in a foreigner registration center, but was soon taken into custody again. Later, the man voluntarily withdrew from further consideration of his asylum application and said he wanted to return home. On June 15, he was handed over to the Russian side.
The agency, the publication writes, "cannot neither confirm nor deny that the man was a Russian serviceman and deserted from the front."