A rally was held in Paris’s 8th arrondissement in support of 22-year-old Russian draft evader Daniil Mukhametov, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe’s correspondent. The report says about 20 people took part.
Those attending included Lev Ponomaryov, one of the founders of Memorial, sociologist Carine Clément, and French lawmaker Jérôme Legavre from the party La France Insoumise.
Earlier, a court in Strasbourg refused to consider Mukhametov’s asylum request. French authorities then ordered him to leave the country. The court cited the Dublin Regulation, under which an asylum seeker must apply in the first European Union country whose border they crossed. In Mukhametov’s case, that country is considered to be Lithuania.
Last summer, the outlet writes, Mukhametov jumped from the Adler–Kaliningrad train in order to reach EU territory and seek asylum. Earlier, a Russian military enlistment office had barred him from leaving the country because he failed to appear after receiving draft notices.
Despite the ruling, he says he does not plan to leave France. After the court decision, Mukhametov said he left an asylum-seeker center and stopped reporting to police. Asked where he is living now, he replied:
“I’m in hiding.”
Human rights advocates say Lithuania is unlikely to grant him asylum and may instead deport him to Russia. Rally organizer Andrei Demidov told Novaya Gazeta Europe that activists are trying to create a precedent in France that would help block the deportation of Russian draft evaders, since Mukhametov is, in his words, not the only such case in the country.
Demidov also said that in visa-free countries including Serbia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan, there are “hundreds, if not thousands” of Russian deserters. In his view, it is important to open a path for them to emigrate to the EU, and easing access to asylum could become a political means of weakening Russia’s military system.