After spending more than six months fighting for
Ukraine in the country’s war-torn east, a Russian volunteer has been ordered to
leave the country immediately - or face deportation.
Alexander Valov, a member of the volunteer Azov
Battalion, told the Kyiv Post on Oct. 23 that he’d gotten the news from the
State Migration Service nearly a year after having applied for political
asylum.
“I provided them with all sorts of documents and audio
recordings (concerning the criminal case against me in Russia) – proof that I
would not be safe if I went back to Russia. By law, they were supposed to
announce their decision in April or May, but I just got it now,” he said, adding
that he’d been given no explanation for the deportation threat.
Sergei Gunko, head of the State Migration Service’s
press service, told the Kyiv Post that by law, the service could not divulge
details about Valov’s asylum request, but that Valov should have been notified
of the reasons why he was denied upon receiving notification of the decision.
A document published by Valov showed that the migration
authorities had ordered him to “leave the territory of Ukraine within five
days.”
Valov, however, said he had no intention of leaving
the country.
“Going back to Russia is not an option,” he said,
adding that he didn’t believe authorities would actually follow through on
their threat to deport him.
“I think everything will be resolved. The wider
problem is that of volunteer fighters not being legalized, and I think that
will be sorted out, but for now we are of course running into problems like
this,” he said.
President Petro Poroshenko promised late last year
that foreign volunteers would receive Ukrainian passports – but nearly a year
later, only one person – Ilya Bogdanov of Right Sector– has been granted one.
According to official data from the Defense Ministry,
about 1,000 other foreign fighters are still waiting for their status to be
legalized. Most of them come from Georgia, Belarus and Russia. Those from
Russia face arguably the biggest danger if they return home, as the Russian
Federal Security Service has already opened cases of extremism against citizens
who opted to fight for Ukraine.
Russian citizen Yulia Tolopa has found herself mired
in the same bureaucratic mess as Valov and hundreds of other foreign fighters,
hoping for Poroshenko to grant her citizenship after a request for political
asylum was denied.
“They (the Russian authorities) have opened three
criminal cases against me, as far as I know – for extremism, terrorism and
working as a mercenary,” Tolopa said. “They could put me in jail for 36 years
altogether,” she said.
Tolopa, a member of the Aidar Battalion, spent a year
fighting out east and only left the front line when she found out she was
pregnant. While her baby has now received Ukrainian citizenship, she remains in
the country without any legal status, having recently submitted a new appeal
for asylum.
She said she would return to Russia eventually – but
only when the political situation has improved.
Ukraine’s parliament on Oct. 6 voted to allow
foreigners to serve in the military, though that does little to help the
hundreds of volunteer fighters who have already served and now have nothing to
show for it.
“There are people who took part in the conflict from
the very beginning, from Maidan, and I think they are more worthy of getting
citizenship than (newly appointed vice governor of Odesa Oblast) Maria Gaidar,
though I’m not against her getting citizenship. I just think it’s unjust that
she got it when so many others who deserve it haven’t,” Valov said.
Valov has a long history of opposition activity at
home in Russia, where criminal cases against him are open over both his support
for Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution and his earlier protests against Russia’s
ruling United Russia Party, for which he was charged with “inciting hatred.” When
these charges were first brought against him in early 2014, he said, the FSB
offered to drop all of the charges if he would recruit Russian volunteers to
fight alongside separatists in eastern Ukraine.
But he refused, and several months later, once the
trial against him began, he fled Russia and moved to Ukraine, where he joined
the Azov Battalion.
Asked whether he thought the deportation threats might
stem from this fleeting affiliation with the FSB, Valov said it was more likely
the decision was the result of bureaucratic incompetence or laziness.
“I haven’t been in touch with the SBU even once” over
the matter, he said.
The migration service’s refusal to grant him asylum
follows a protest on Oct. 17 in which dozens of foreign fighters gathered in
front of the presidential administration to demand their status be legalized.
“It’s just one thing after another. First, we gathered
25,000 signatures (in favor of giving foreign fighters citizenship), and then
this. We’re not really asking for much,” Valov said.
“A thousand people like me were ready to spill their
own blood for this country, and those 1,000 people need help now,” he said.
Staff writer
Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected]
