Alexei R., a 37-year-old Ukrainian citizen who had lived and worked in Moscow since 2016, was denied entry to Russia in September 2024 after hours of screening at Sheremetyevo airport. His wife Yulia, her older daughter, and the couple’s plans to have a child remained in Russia.
Alexei met Yulia in 2019, and they married in 2021. After the war began, they did not leave immediately: Yulia said her 16-year-old daughter, who has high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, would have struggled with an abrupt change of school and country. The couple planned to move later, after having a child and saving money.
In August 2024 they traveled to Turkey to see Alexei’s relatives. On the way back, Yulia and her daughter passed border control quickly, while Alexei was sent for additional checks. He said his devices were taken, passwords demanded, and he was questioned about chats, contacts and reactions to posts, including why he had liked content featuring the Ukrainian cat Stepan. After giving DNA, he was told he was being denied entry for “Other”; he was only allowed to photograph the document.
The outlet notes that since autumn 2023 Ukrainians have been officially screened at Sheremetyevo, and entry into Russia for them has been restricted to that airport. Human rights advocate Svetlana Gannushkina said such decisions are made by an individual border official and are effectively impossible to challenge.
A week after Alexei was sent back to Turkey, the couple learned Yulia was pregnant. His employer could not keep him on staff, and he later moved to Spain and applied for asylum. Yulia stayed in Russia and went through pregnancy and childbirth alone; their daughter was born at 20:15 after an emergency cesarean section. She is now ten months old and has never seen her father in person: the family communicates only by video call.