‘Go to your people’ How one Russian living illegally in Ukraine was deported directly to Russia — at his own request
After Kyiv severed diplomatic ties with Moscow following Russia’s 2022 invasion, direct deportations of Russian citizens to their home country became virtually impossible. Yet in the summer of 2024, as the news outlet Vot Tak learned, Ukraine deported a Russian citizen directly to Russia — at his own request. Before his deportation, the man had spent two and a half years living illegally in Ukraine, working first in Odesa and later in Lviv, all while the two countries were at war. Meduza shares a retelling of his story.
Denis (name changed) moved from Russia to Ukraine in 2021 after getting a job as a head chef at a restaurant in Odesa. At first, he lived in the country legally, but when his visa required him to leave and reenter Ukraine to extend his stay, he failed to do so and became an undocumented immigrant. Then, the full-scale war began.
“There was shooting and explosions in Odesa,” Denis recounted. Initially, he thought the war would end quickly. The lawyer at Denis’s workplace advised him to stay put and avoid drawing attention to himself. “He told me, ‘You have a Russian passport; there’s no telling how they’ll treat you at the border,’” Denis explained. So, he stayed in Ukraine.
Denis continued working in Odesa, living in what he describes as “incognito mode.” Only his fiancée, his boss, and a couple of friends knew his nationality. He said locals didn’t suspect him because “90 to 95 percent of people in Odesa speak Russian.” Denis rarely left his apartment, which his employer rented directly across from the restaurant. “I’d just cross the road and be at work. I tried not to go out much, and when I did, I was always looking over my shoulder,” he said. He got paid in cash, didn’t have a Ukrainian bank account, and avoided volunteering or anything related to the army.
Meduza has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from the very start, and we are committed to reporting objectively on a war we firmly oppose. Join Meduza in its mission to challenge the Kremlin’s censorship with the truth. Donate today.
Eventually, Denis began exploring the option of leaving Ukraine with a Russian passport. After reading online chats and forums, he realized it was safe for him to leave and decided it was “time to go.” In February 2024, he quit his job and asked his employer to return his passport, which he’d left in his care for safekeeping, worried about law enforcement conducting widespread searches.
However, his employer refused to return the document. Denis suspects this was retaliation for quitting. “He said he didn’t have it, that he never took it, and claimed I must have lost it myself,” Denis recalled. Without his passport, his original plan to go to Moldova and seek help getting home from the Russian Embassy there fell apart. Left with no other options, Denis decided to remain in Ukraine and “wait it out again.”
For Russians like Denis, leaving Ukraine without a foreign passport is nearly impossible. Travel out of the country is limited to land borders, and even with a passport, unless they have an E.U. visa, Russians can only enter Moldova. At the same time, according to Ukrainian lawyer Olena Yurkina, head of the legal department at Reforum Help, the Red Cross can issue transit visas to allow people to leave Ukraine, even if they’ve lost their documents.
‘Don’t go left or right — there are mines’
“I couldn’t find work in Ukraine because I couldn’t tell anyone I was a Russian citizen. Without documents, I couldn’t officially get hired anywhere,” Denis told Vot Tak. When his Ukrainian fiancée was offered a job in Lviv “with housing and everything included,” she purchased two train tickets under her name, and Denis went with her.
Once in Lviv, he found work as a delivery driver. No one asked for his documents or required him to speak Ukrainian when he was hired. “Even though everyone in Lviv speaks Ukrainian,” Denis noted. He told his employer that he’d lost all his documents in a fire back in Odesa. However, his inability to speak Ukrainian “drew looks” in stores.
Denis worked as a delivery driver for about three months before being stopped by the police in early June 2024. At first, they mistook him for a Ukrainian citizen and threatened to send him to the front lines.
“The police asked me, ‘Who are you? How old are you?’” Denis recounted. When he told them he was 33, they replied, “Just the right age for the draft. Let’s go, you’re going to fight.” Denis refused, explaining that he wasn’t a Ukrainian citizen. When they asked where he was from, he told them. He still had his internal Russian ID.
“They took me to the station and started making a thousand different threats,” Denis said. “They told me they’d jail me, deport me. They went through my things, took my phone, and checked all my information to see if there was anything incriminating.”
At the station, Denis was offered a deal: cooperate with Ukrainian security forces by gathering the names of police chiefs in Moscow through his Russian relatives. In return, he would be allowed to stay in Ukraine. If he refused, he would be deported. Denis, who already wanted to leave Ukraine, opted for deportation. He was fined 5,100 hryvnias (about $120) for overstaying his legal residency and sent to a temporary holding facility for foreigners in the Lviv region.
Denis requested to be deported directly to Russia, which staff at the facility said was only the second such case they’d seen during the war. “Because, generally speaking, none of the Russians in Ukraine want to go back to Russia,” Denis explained. He said he was treated well at the holding facility: “They didn’t even take my phone.”
A week later, Denis and three other Russians were transported in a van to Sumy, near the border with Russia’s Belgorod region. According to him, the group included a man and a woman who had been caring for sick relatives in Ukraine and “an alcoholic” who was deported against his will. Denis said the woman had lost her documents and wanted to return to Russia, and she’d spent about a year in a holding facility awaiting deportation.
After a 10- to 12-hour journey, the group was dropped off near the border. “They told us, ‘Go to your people.’ There was a road, and they warned us, ‘Don’t go left or right; there are mines,’” Denis said. “We walked about two kilometers to the checkpoint on our own. It was only at the border crossing that Russian security services met us.” Denis believes Ukrainian and Russian security forces coordinated the transfer, as the FSB officers knew they were coming.
Once in Russia, Denis was interrogated for seven days. He declined to share details with Vot Tak, only saying it was “harsh.” Afterward, he returned to Moscow and began the process of replacing his documents. However, unknown callers began contacting his relatives, asking where he was and what he was doing.
Three months later, Denis left for Kazakhstan. His Ukrainian fiancée had been denied entry into Russia at a Moscow airport despite being registered in Russian-occupied Luhansk. “We decided to settle in Kazakhstan until the war ends,” Denis said.
Deportation in wartime
Before February 24, 2022, Ukraine regularly deported Russian citizens to Russia. However, after the full-scale invasion began, Kyiv severed diplomatic ties with Moscow. Under these circumstances, Ukraine cannot deport individuals to Russia, explained Valeriy Yakovenko, a project coordinator at the Ukrainian human rights organization Prave Dilo. Ukraine's State Migration Service has also not reported any cases of Russians being directly deported to Russia since February 24, 2022.
A journalist from Vot Tak spoke with several members of the Telegram group Russians in Ukraine, where Russian citizens discuss living in Ukraine and legalizing their status during the war. None of the members could recall a single instance of Ukrainian authorities directly deporting Russians to Russia since the war began. The group’s administrators also told Vot Tak that they were unaware of any such cases. According to them, Ukraine typically deports Russians to neighboring countries, including, in some cases, Moldova.
Lawyer Olena Yurkina told Vot Tak that while rare, there might still have been cases of Russians being deported directly to Russia after the full-scale invasion began. However, she said she hadn’t encountered such instances in her practice. According to Yurkina, it’s possible to deport people directly to Russia via the Kolotilovka-Pokrovka checkpoint, which remains operational by prior arrangement.
“I suspect Denis’s case isn’t unique,” Yurkina said. “It’s clear he agreed to deportation to Russia and didn’t apply for refugee status. At the temporary holding center for foreign nationals, he didn’t file an appeal or request protection from Ukraine but voluntarily agreed to leave. On what basis would he have been sent to Moldova, for instance? Not all Russians in Ukraine are people for whom it’s dangerous to return to Russia.”
Vot Tak reached out to Ukraine’s State Migration Service to ask whether any Russians have been directly deported to Russia since February 24, 2022. At the time of publication, the agency had not responded.
