He refused to fight for Putin. Germany says it’s safe for him to go back.

When Russia sent Georgy Avaliani to fight in Ukraine, he did exactly what German leaders proposed: He ran.

A pacifist who fled the front after being forcibly conscripted, he says he survived beatings and mock executions in a “torture basement” before escaping Russia altogether.

Last week, Germany told him it would be safe to go back.

In a letter, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) rejected the 47-year-old’s asylum application, concluding he was unlikely to face persecution if he returned to Russia — a decision that has alarmed networks helping Russian soldiers flee the war.

Advocates for deserters say the ruling reinforces Russian President Vladimir Putin’s message that there is no safe exit for those who flee the front, as European governments harden asylum policies and as peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have stalled.

“Even if I could escape death, I’d get sent to the front or face a 15-year prison sentence,” said Avaliani, who is planning to appeal the decision. 

The rejection comes at a sensitive time for Russians seeking to rebuild new lives abroad. 

The United States last summer began deporting asylum seekers back to Russia, with the latest planeload landing just last week. And in November the EU tightened its visa rules for Russian citizens.

“European politicians say that Russians need to fight Putin, that they need to resist,” said Alexei Alshansky, a former sergeant-major turned analyst at A Farewell to Arms, a group that assists Russian deserters. 

“At the same time, people who have actually refused to fight for Putin and have gone through a very difficult journey are not receiving any help from those same countries,” he added. 

Fleeing the war

Avaliani was among tens of thousands of Russians who were served call-up papers in September 2022 as part of Putin’s “partial mobilization” drive.

A construction engineer and father of three, Avaliani said he had made it clear from the outset that he wouldn’t fight. “This is not my war. I’m a pacifist,” he told POLITICO. But his appeals for an exemption on health and family grounds were rejected.

Tens of thousands of Russians were served call-up papers in 2022. | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

“It’s useless to try to fight the system,” he said. “If it wants to devour you, it will devour you. So I decided I had to act.”

Within weeks of arriving at the front in eastern Ukraine, Avaliani fled — only to be captured and taken to what he describes as a “torture basement” in Russian-occupied Luhansk. There, he says, he was beaten and subjected to mock executions.

The conditions, he said, were “inhumane.” 

Returned to the front, he escaped again and was captured a second time. Finally, on his third try, he crossed into Belarus and from there traveled to Uzbekistan.

While Avaliani lived in hiding abroad, he said, police visited his home and questioned his wife. In 2025 he and his family were reunited and applied for political asylum in Germany.

Change of tune

The decision to return Avaliani marks a stark reversal from Germany’s stance at the start of Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine.

In September 2022, Marco Buschmann, then Germany’s justice minister, hailed the exodus of Russians of fighting age, saying on X that “anyone who hates Putin’s policies and loves liberal democracy is very welcome here in Germany.”

The interior minister at the time, Nancy Faeser, echoed that sentiment, telling the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper that “anyone who courageously opposes President Vladimir Putin’s regime and therefore puts themselves in grave danger can apply for asylum in Germany on grounds of political persecution.” 

In 2022 and 2023 about one in 10 Russian men of military age who reached Germany received some form of legal protection from the country. In 2024 and 2025 that number dropped sharply to around 4 percent. 

The change coincided with a shift in the political climate.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government, which took office last May, has led a crackdown on migration, hoping to lure voters away from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — now the largest opposition party in Germany’s Bundestag.

The rejection letter that Avaliani received, seen by POLITICO, stated he was unlikely to face persecution in Russia beyond a fine. Russia, it added, is no longer actively mobilizing men.

Friedrich Merz’s government has led a crackdown on migration. | Nadja Wohlleben/Getty Images

When it comes to defectors like Avaliani, the letter concludes, there is no “considerable likelihood of concrete and sustained interest in them on the part of the Russian state or other actors.” 

Carbon copy

Rights activists argue that the assessment of the German authorities denies what is going on in Russia.

Many who were mobilized and sent to the front in 2022 have yet to come home. Russia continues to recruit some 30,000 soldiers monthly. 

The letter to Avaliani reads like a carbon copy of rejections sent to other defectors, said Artyom Klyga, a lawyer with Connection, an organization that helps conscientious objectors. 

“It’s like they [the authorities] use a single Word document, a template that they slightly adapt,” Klyga said. 

He argued that German authorities fail to distinguish between draft dodgers — men who fled the country to avoid being mobilized — and defectors like Avaliani, who were actually served call-up papers.  

For them, the risk of returning to Russia is not a fine but jail time or a forced return to the front. 

Asked for a reaction, Germany’s BAMF migration office said it couldn’t comment on individual cases but noted that every asylum application “involves an examination of each individual case, in which every refugee story presented is carefully reviewed.” The agency added that protection is only granted to applicants with a well-founded fear of persecution.

Burden of proof

In practice, some argue, applicants like Avaliani face an impossible burden of proof. 

“Ultimately, [the German authorities] try to talk their way out of [granting asylum] with statistics,” said Peter von Auer, a legal expert at German refugee advocacy organization Pro Asyl. 

“They argue that it is statistically unlikely that what asylum seekers suspect or fear will happen, will befall them.”

Out of 8,201 Russian men of military age who have applied for asylum in Germany since 2022, just 416 — about 5 percent — were granted some form of protection, such as being given asylum status, according to figures provided by the government in response to a parliamentary question.

Deserters presumably comprise a small minority of those cases, given the significant barriers faced by those who have already been drafted to make their way out of Russia and then on to Europe.

Alshansky, the A Farewell to Arms co-founder, argued that deporting people like Avaliani undercuts Europe’s promise to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

The asylum rejection “helps Putin to maintain the idea that it’s useless to run.” In fact, he said, the calculus is simple: “The more deserters there are, the easier it will be to defend Ukraine.”