France has for the first time issued humanitarian visas to activists from Russia who were threatened with deportation from the USA, member of the Anti-War Committee of Russia Andrey Pivovarov said on social network X.
He said they were a married couple who had been persecuted in their home country after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The couple fled to the US but were denied asylum.
“There was a real risk of them being returned to Russia, and there is an almost 100 per cent chance of imprisonment there. The consuls of the Anti-War Committee together with Russie Libertés managed to prepare documents and convince France that even though they were in the US they were still at risk and had the right to get a humanitarian visa. This is a very important precedent, this is the first time this has happened in four years of war,” Pivovarov wrote.
According to him, the man has already arrived in France, while his wife is still in a deportation camp in Florida.
Earlier, at least five deportation flights with Russians were sent out of the US. They included opposition activists and defectors. Some of the deported men had earlier been issued summonses to military recruitment centres upon arrival in Russia, and are being interrogated for hours at the airport by FSB officers.
At least two Russian citizens expelled from the US – former military officer Artem Vovchenko and anti-war activist Leonid Melekhin – were arrested on arrival on criminal charges.
As Radio Liberty’s project Sibir. Realities, with the coming to power of the Donald Trump administration, US migration policy has become tougher, and about a thousand Russian migrants have been detained by US immigration police. Attitudes towards Russian asylum seekers changed dramatically in May 2024: before that, entering through the Mexican border seemed like one of the easiest ways to flee war, and once across the border, asylum seekers were given a summons and left free. In May 2024, asylum seekers from Russia began to be placed in immigration prisons.
From the end of July 2025, Germany stopped issuing humanitarian visas to those persecuted for political reasons.