Inter­na­tio­nal Support of Conscien­tious Objec­tors and Deserters

"I believed I would find protection in Europe"

Joint Statement

(14.02.2025) On 16 February 2023, in the resolution ‘One year of Russia’s invasion and war of aggression against Ukraine’, the EU Parliament demanded that Member States provide protection for conscientious objectors and deserters fleeing Belarus, Russia, and occupied Ukraine. However, this is not guaranteed in most Member States.

Mikita Sviryd: The story of a Belarusian deserter in Lithuania

Stuck between the threat of death penalty in Belarus and illegal refugee status in Lithuania

Mikita Sviryd, a Belarusan deserter who, when the war started in Ukraine, fled illegally to Lithuania because he was afraid that the Belarusan army would go to Ukraine to help Russia. Today Mikita is an illegal refugee, Lithuania has denied the young deserter political asylum. In Belarus, desertion can be punishable by death penalty. Today, he is desperate and expects nothing good in his future. What is for geopolitics the fate of one guy who at the age of 19 decided to give up being a soldier? #protection4Nikita

Oral statement given at Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants

UN Human Rights Council, 56th Session

(26.06.2024) This morning, June 26th, on the occasion of the 56th session of the UN Human Rights Council, it took place in Geneva the conclusion of the Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants. Connection e.V. took the floor, in collaboration with WRI, to raise the issue of denial of asylum to conscientious objectors and to call on the members of the Human Rights Council to protect conscientious objectors whose human rights are violated in their country of origin.

Armenia: Russian conscientious objector arrested by the Russian military and transferred to Russia

(20.12.2023) Uncertainty is spreading in the Russian exile community in Armenia following the arrest and extradition of a fugitive soldier by the Russian military police in the Armenian city of Gyumri. Dmitry Setrakov, 20, had fled to Armenia to live in exile. On 6 December he was arrested by Russian military police and taken to a military prison of the Russian 102nd military garrison. He was initially sentenced to 27 days in detention for unauthorised removal from the troops, but now the Russian military has extradited him to Rostov-on-Don in the southern military district of Russia.