The five Russians have been living in Seoul’s Incheon airport for months since separately entering the country late last year. AP
Seoul: A group of Russians who escaped from their country to avoid being drafted into the army to fight in the war in Ukraine, have claimed that their lives are hanging in the balance after South Korea rejected their bid to seek asylum in that country.
The five Russians have been living in Seoul’s Incheon airport for months since separately entering the country late last year. They have not been allowed to leave the airport, and they sleep on makeshift beds in a windowless basement room, with muffins and fruit juice for breakfast and dinner and “in-flight” lunches, all provided by the justice ministry.
The five men have now initiated legal action against the South Korean government, their lawyer Lee Jong-Chan said on Tuesday.
“We don’t eat normally; we hardly take showers. I feel as if I were a caged animal in a zoo,” said one of the five men who identified himself as Jashar in an interview with the Joongang Ilbo newspaper.
“They have filed lawsuits against South Korea’s Justice Ministry’s decision to deny them chances to be screened for possibly granting them refugee status,” Lee told This Week in Asia.
The ministry rejected their asylum applications because it did not consider conscription evasion to be a valid reason for becoming a refugee.
“They should have been repatriated. But they launched lawsuits, challenging the government’s decision that they are not qualified to be screened for possibly granting them refugee status,” a Justice Ministry official said.
Lee pointed out that his clients were not dodging the draft in peacetime, which would be a legitimate reason to be denied refugee status. “They are clearly fleeing from a war of invasion by Russia which is being condemned globally,” he said.
A court decision for three of the five men is expected at the end of January, while the other two cases are still being considered, the lawyer said.
According to Yoon Sung-suk, a political-science professor at Chonnam National University, the five men had turned into a diplomatic headache for Seoul.
“The court will probably grant them a chance to be screened as potential refugees, but the government is unlikely to allow them to live in South Korea as legitimate refugees,” Yoon said.
“However, the government must not deport them back to Russia where they will certainly face harsh punishment,” he added, noting that Seoul should “seek ways” for the men “to wait out the war”.
In 2022, the year Russia invaded Ukraine, South Korea had granted refugee status to about 1 per cent of some 2,000 applicants.
‘My country is the aggressor’
One of the five men is called Vladimir Maraktaev. He is 23. He arrived in South Korea from the Republic of Buryatia, in Siberia, around 2,300km (1470 miles) away. The university student and his four compatriots are among thousands who have fled Russia following President Vladimir Putin’s order last year to make more men sign up to fight.
Having spent most of his savings travelling across three countries, Maraktaev said he had only a few dollars left.
Another man from the airport group is a person in his 30s who wished to be identified only by the name Andrey. He is from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. He arrived in Incheon on October 14. According to him, he had been fiercely protesting Putin’s “corrupt” regime long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and that he had no choice but to flee after he received a conscription notice.
“I’ve participated in multiple anti-government rallies. Once, the police arrested me and beat me during an hours-long interrogation session. I had to get surgery for my broken chin and nose,” he said. “I knew I would be thrown to the front lines [in the Ukraine war] because I’m on their black list.”
Andrey first travelled to Kazakhstan by train. But following rumours that the Central Asian country, one of Russia’s closest allies, was planning to send so-called draft dodgers back, he decided to escape further and cover a greater distance.
“I really miss my wife and son. But for now, I can’t return to them,” he said. “I hope that South Korea will help me stay here, at least until the war is over.”
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