A court in Saxony ruled that conscription into the Russian army is not sufficient grounds for protection

On July 1, the Higher Administrative Court of Saxony denied protection to a young Russian from Dagestan. In the court’s view, conscription into the Russian army by itself does not provide grounds for asylum or subsidiary protection (the right to stay in the country without refugee status).

This ruling was found by Artyom Klyga, “Exiles’” lawyer specializing in the defense of conscripts and servicemen. In his view, German judges are introducing a new formula into practice: they correctly interpret the risks associated with military service in Russia — but consider them insufficient grounds for protection.

At our request, he summarized the ruling (translation here) and commented on it.

Hi, this is Artyom Klyga.

This isn’t the first negative ruling by a German court concerning Russian conscripts. I’ve previously written about two similar cases (the first and the second).

In this case, we’re talking about a 23-year-old man born in Dagestan. In 2019, when he was 16, his family moved to Germany. That same year he filed an asylum application. His mother explained that the family had left Russia so that the young man wouldn’t have to join the Russian army. That was the main reason.

But the young man was refused both asylum and subsidiary protection (i.e., the right to stay in the country without refugee status). Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) stated that he would face no serious harm if conscripted. He was ordered to leave Germany under threat of deportation.

The young man appealed BAMF’s decision to court, which ruled in 2024 — after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The administrative court found that, if returned to Russia, the young man — now 20 — would face a high probability of being sent to the war. The court found this sufficient grounds for subsidiary protection.

But the migration agency appealed — and Saxony’s Higher Administrative Court sided with BAMF. As a result, the court stripped the young man even of his right to subsidiary protection: he can now be deported to Russia. In its ruling, the court acknowledged it was likely the young man would be conscripted into military service. It even noted that Russia’s alternative civilian service system essentially doesn’t work — and that in Chechnya and Dagestan, alternative civilian service isn’t offered at all as a substitute for compulsory military service.

But the court found it NOT likely that:

1. Conscripts would be sent to the front. The court noted that since spring 2022 there have been no confirmed cases of conscripts being sent to the front: they serve in the rear, guarding the border, and in Crimea. And the risk of being sent to the combat zone in the Kursk region has dropped since the Ukrainian offensive there ended in March 2025.
2. Mobilization. The court declared mobilization over as of October 2022 and noted there are no signs of a new mobilization (funny to read this in light of July–August news).
3. Coercion to sign a contract. The court acknowledged pressure on conscripts: from persuasion and promises of money, to deception and violence. It even cited statistics: according to human-rights advocates (in particular, Sergei Krivenko), between 20 and 50 percent of all conscripts per year are pressured into signing a contract. But this data didn’t convince the court that the coercion is systemic in nature. Moreover, the judges wrote, one can’t say for certain whether conscripts sign contracts because of money or because of violence. The absence of that information counted against the plaintiff.
4. Hazing. As before, German courts assess hazing in the Russian army this way: another copy-paste job here, [concluding that] hundreds of cases a year out of roughly 290,000 conscripts don’t amount to a risk for the applicant.
5. Punishment for evasion. Since the applicant is not registered [with the military enlistment office] and has not received any call-up notices, the court found that Article 328 of the Russian Criminal Code doesn’t apply to him; and that in practice, Russian courts usually punish “evaders” with a fine of around 250 euros.
6. His origin from Dagestan as an additional risk factor. This is strange, if only in the context that we know for a fact there’s a difference in how men are drafted into military service (conscription, mobilization, contract) in Moscow versus the republics of the Caucasus.

What upsets me in particular is that the judges are introducing a new formula into practice for cases like this. They acknowledge up-to-date sources on Russia and correctly interpret the facts related to the risks of military service. But now that’s simply not enough: if it “can’t be ruled out” that conscripts are pressured into contracts, that still doesn’t mean there’s a “significant probability” of it. Unfortunately, you can argue about such probabilities forever.

A Russian translation of the ruling is in the chat. The original can be downloaded here.

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