Moscow drafts them. Brussels risks locking them out. Caught in between are the soldiers who refuse to fight Vladimir Putin’s war.
EU Perspectives spoke to Anastasia Burakova, a human rights lawyer and founder of The Ark, the largest support network for Russian citizens opposing the invasion of Ukraine, about who should be let into the EU and who should not.
There is also the question of deserters, Burakova says. “A clear mechanism to help them has still not been built. Today we assist such people in Armenia and other countries and often they do not even hold a travel document that would let them reach a safer country and apply for asylum. But if we want more soldiers to lay down their weapons, we have to show them an exit.”
Some European governments have supported restricting entry for Russian tourists. What’s your take?
In their current form, these measures do not draw that distinction, and that is precisely the problem. A blanket restriction based on nationality treats a Russian passport as a political position.
In practice, the people most affected are not Kremlin loyalists: officials, oligarchs and people close to the regime have Golden visas, second passports and other routes available to them. The people who cannot leave are activists, journalists, human rights defenders, anti-war volunteers, parents trying to reach children in exile.
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I support targeted sanctions against individuals who serve the war and the regime officials, propagandists, businesspeople funding the aggression, militaries who take part in the bloody war, people who take part in violation of human rights. I am against collective measures based on nationality alone, they are ineffective against the people they claim to target, and they hand the Kremlin one of its favourite narratives: that the West is hostile to ordinary Russians as such.
From inside Russia, this narrative is one of the strongest arguments the propaganda has, and it works in particular on people who otherwise have doubts about the war. There is a strategic argument here as well.
Every channel kept open between Russian society and Europe is a channel through which information, alternative perspectives, and human contact continue to flow. Cutting these channels does not weaken the regime: it strengthens its monopoly over what Russians see and hear. Targeted measures against those who actively serve the war, paired with preserved and expanded pathways for those persecuted because of their opposition to it: this is both more effective and more consistent with the values Europe says it defends.
What should be the EU’s approach toward former Russian military personnel seeking entry or protection in Europe?
Collective responsibility is very convenient for those who are actually guilty. It dilutes the individual accountability of the perpetrators.
The 21st sanctions package is a good example. It includes the exception for deserters that we and other human rights defenders have been pushing for: deserters, dissidents who served in the army, and on humanitarian and national grounds. The visa exception in the new package is an important first step, and now the central question is how it will be implemented in practice.
What is missing from the package is conscripts. They were not included in the exceptions, and this directly contradicts the EU’s own asylum policy.
Conscript service is a constitutional duty of Russian citizens, which in itself is not a ground for international protection under the Geneva Convention, and on this basis, conscripts already receive asylum refusals in EU countries. The same person is therefore legally obliged to perform conscript service in Russia. At the same time, they will be punished for it with an EU visa ban. In the overwhelming majority of cases, conscripts who have not signed a contract do not participate in combat operations against Ukraine.
The main question that remains open is how the EU intends to verify the fact of Russian army service. If applicants are expected to obtain confirmation from a military registration office, the situation becomes dangerous: projects assisting Russian citizens routinely advise against visiting military registration offices because of the risk of violations and forced conscription.
The workable alternative is the Estonian path, building named lists based on journalist investigations and information from Ukraine identifying actual combatants and people involved in war crimes. That is a measure of individual responsibility, and it does not affect people who took no part in this criminal war.
Every soldier who lays down his weapon is a soldier no longer fighting against Ukraine.
— Anastasia Burakova, human rights lawyer, founder of The Ark
This is, in essence, the case-by-case principle. People who refused to fight, who deserted, or who never participated in combat should have a clear pathway to safety in Europe, both because protecting them is consistent with the EU’s values, and because every soldier who lays down his weapon is a soldier no longer fighting against Ukraine.
People who actively took part in combat, and especially in violations of international humanitarian law, should be screened individually, in cooperation with Ukrainian and international accountability mechanisms. Treating both groups as a single category, through either automatic exclusion or automatic admission, only punishes the wrong people.
