News
A court in the city of Almaty has denied asylum to St. Petersburg activist Yulia Yemelyanova, who was arrested in Kazakhstan in September 2025, according to a report by BBC News Russian citing the Russian opposition-in-exile’s Antiwar Committee. According to the group’s lawyer, Kazakhstan still cannot formally extradite the Russian citizen, as the court ruling has not yet entered into legal force. Yemelyanova’s defense plans to appeal any decision obligating her to return to Russia.
In February, Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor General’s Office approved Russia’s request to extradite Yemelyanova. However, the office later said the extradition would be suspended until Yemelyanova’s asylum request had gone through all stages of review.
Yulia Yemelyanova, who previously volunteered at the late Alexei Navalny’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, left Russia after criminal charges were brought against her in 2021 (she was accused of stealing a phone from a taxi driver). In August 2025, she was flying to Vietnam with a layover in Kazakhstan and was detained at Almaty airport due to the fact that her name appeared on a Russian wanted list. Yemelyanova applied for asylum following her arrest.
Yemelyanova is the fourth Russian asylum seeker since late January to be handed a deportation decision from Kazakh officials. The others are Chechen Mansur Movlaev, an open critic of Ramzan Kadyrov; Crimean native Oleksandr Kachkurkin, who was arrested and charged with treason after arriving in Russia; and Yevgeny Korobov, an officer who deserted from the Russian army.
Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) was outlawed as “extremist” in 2021, and Russia has continued to persecute Navalny’s supporters, associates, and even people publicly mourning him by deploying statutes concerning extremism, terrorism, and the disruption of public order. Examples include Leonid Volkov, a top Navalny ally, who was sentenced in absentia to 18 years in prison last June on 40 counts of alleged “extremism” linked to his work at the ACF; Antonina Favorskaya, Konstantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin, and Artyom Kriger, four journalists convicted in April 2025 for their alleged links to Navalny’s “extremist” movement; and Aleksei Liptser, Vadim Kobzev, and Igor Sergunin, Navalny’s former lawyers, who were imprisoned as part of the same crackdown.