He fled from being drafted into the Ukrainian War. But Finland rejects asylum for a Russian – with an astonishing reason.
Nov 3, 2025, 4:44 amNov 3, 2025, 4:44 am
Thomas Wanhoff / t-online
In the spring, 21-year-old Russian Daniil Muhametov received a draft notice: he was to go to war against Ukraine. But he managed to escape; according to his own statements, he jumped off a train in Lithuania and from there went to Finland to apply for asylum. However, this is difficult.
The Finnish authorities have rejected an asylum application, reports the Russian-language broadcaster “Nastoyascheje vremja”, which is financed with US tax money. Military service is not a reason for asylum, according to the argument.
Daniil Muhametov in an interview: The Russian fled the war against Ukraine.Image: Screenshot Daniil Muhametow/Nastoyascheje vremja
In mid-June it became known that a Russian citizen had jumped near the town of Kybartai in Lithuania. The train was traveling from the Russian city of Adler to Kaliningrad. He also drives through Lithuania. On June 17, 2025, Muhametov took advantage of the opportunity and jumped. The action was noticed and Lithuania began a search operation using dogs, helicopters and drones, as the news portal LRT wrote. He had a transit visa, authorities said at the time. But he wasn’t allowed to leave the train. The Lithuanian authorities searched for him for two months, reports “Nastojasheye vremya”.
“I refused to take up arms”
«For me it was the right decision to refuse military service. I refused to take up arms. I saw no other option than to leave the Russian Federation. I made this decision,” says Daniil.
After he was wanted in Lithuania, he decided to flee to Finland and apply for asylum there, he tells the Russian-language channel in a video call. However, Finnish immigration authorities ordered Daniil to be sent back to Lithuania, his first country of entry into the European Union, where he was wanted. Interior Minister Vladislav Kondratovič reported that a Russian who had swum across a border river into NATO territory had already been sent back.
Suspicions in Finland
But instead there was criticism of the Russian refugee. «People didn’t know anything about Danila. And they immediately declared him a possible Russian saboteur: perhaps he had connections to Russian intelligence, perhaps it was something else entirely. But in other words, he was portrayed in all the media as a Russian spy, as James Bond,” said human rights activist Olga Karach “Nastojasheye vremya”.
Mukhametov is suing the European Court of Human Rights. In the meantime, he sent a video message to his parents.
«Hello, mom and dad. Hello, my dear sisters. I want to tell you that I’m fine. I am in a safe and peaceful place. I hope you’re doing well too. I miss you very much. I think of you every day. Greetings from me to the whole family. I love you.”
Since the beginning of the war against Ukraine, 104 Russians have applied for asylum in Finland because they do not want to go to war and are therefore persecuted in their homeland. 90 percent of the applications were rejected. According to research by the US-funded broadcaster, the reason given was that there was no longer any mobilization in Russia. President Putin would have announced this. In autumn 2022 there was a partial mobilization to recruit 300,000 soldiers. The order was later revoked. Finland refers to a United Nations convention that says military service alone is not a reason for the right to asylum.
In fact, conscription alone means that you will most likely be sent to war. The Reuters news agency, for example, reported on conscripts who were sent to the front in Donbass without sufficient training and equipment. The Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry emphasize that conscripts will not be sent into combat and that conscription has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine. However, Ukraine has repeatedly claimed to have captured Russian conscripts and Putin has previously admitted that some of them were accidentally used at the start of the 2022 invasion.
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