‘You’ll be imprisoned, but you won’t be killed’ This Russian activist fled to the U.S. after multiple arrests — only to be deported and jailed yet again

In May 2023, Russian activist Evgeny Mashinin arrived in the U.S., where he planned to seek asylum after facing multiple arrests back home for participating in pro-democracy and anti-war protest rallies. He appeared to have a solid case: the European Court of Human Rights had even awarded him thousands of euros for his detentions. However, the U.S. judge hearing his case denied his request — and ordered his deportation back to Russia, where he was soon arrested yet again.

Evgeny Mashinin, a 27-year-old Russian man who sought asylum in the U.S. after being repeatedly arrested in his home country, was ultimately deported back to Russia, where authorities continued to persecute him for his activism, the outlet Dovod reports.

Mashinin told Dovod that he sought asylum in the U.S. following four arrests at protest rallies in Russia. He was targeted by the authorities for his involvement in rallies organized by the late opposition politician Alexey Navalny, protests against the torture of prisoners, and demonstrations against the war in Ukraine. In June 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Russia to pay Mashinin 5,000 euros ($5,175) as compensation for two of his detentions during Navalny's rallies.

According to Dovod, Mashinin arrived in the U.S. on May 12, 2023. He stated that he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, though he did not provide further details. After crossing, he was placed in a detention center operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Texas. Mashinin spent 13 months in immigration detention before appearing before Judge Kevin Terrell, who ordered his deportation.

“Judge Kevin Terrell has an approval rating of virtually zero percent. Winning was impossible — even the ECHR decision didn’t help. They even denied asylum to someone facing criminal charges; the judge said, ‘You’ll be imprisoned, but you won’t be killed,’” Mashinin recounted. The exact timing of the judge’s ruling is unclear, but it likely occurred no earlier than June 2024.

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Deportations to Russia

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As soon as he was deported to Russia, according to Mashinin, police immediately came to his home and filed two misdemeanor charges: one for “discrediting” the military and the other for disorderly conduct. A local court reviewed the cases on December 25–26, 2024. In the ruling on the disorderly conduct charge, the court claimed that Mashinin had “loudly used crude, obscene language in front of bystanders” and sentenced him to two days in jail. The court did not provide details on the “discrediting” charge. According to Dovod, Mashinin was also fined 35,000 rubles ($343) for anti-war posts on the social media platform VKontakte.

After serving his two-day jail sentence, Mashinin left Russia and later reported that he was in Morocco.

Publicly available sources suggest that the U.S. government had not previously deported political activists seeking asylum from persecution in Russia. However, there were documented cases in 2022–2023 of deportations to Russia involving individuals who refused to participate in the full-scale war against Ukraine, despite the White House’s stated support for Russians seeking asylum in order to avoid mobilization.