Tribunal grants asylum to Russian who protested outside embassy and gave £22 to Ukraine's army

Published 30 October 2026, 11:39

• An Upper Tribunal ruling rejected Home Office claims that he was just a 'face in the crowd' at small embassy protests.
• Russia jailed a paediatrician for five years after a patient's mother reported her anti-war remarks, the tribunal heard.
• He stood as an opposition candidate in Russia's 2013 elections and then received anonymous calls warning him off politics.

A Russian man has been granted asylum in the UK after an Upper Tribunal judge rejected the Home Office's argument that he was merely a "face in the crowd" at anti-Putin protests outside London's Russian embassy — despite his most tangible act of dissent being a £22 Bitcoin donation to Ukraine's army.

The man, identified only as AD to protect his safety, entered the UK on a Tier 5 seasonal worker visa on 1 April 2022 and claimed asylum on 30 June 2023, basing his claim on years of opposition political activity in Russia and his continued anti-government activities in Britain, according to the Upper Tribunal ruling.

AD's political history in Russia dated back to 2013, when he stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia in state Duma elections.

He attended a protest against Russia's annexation of Crimea in Yekaterinburg in March 2014, and on 24 January 2021 joined a demonstration in support of Alexei Navalny.

When police surrounded and began detaining protesters at that rally, AD was so frightened that he lied to his employer about having attended.

In the UK, AD attended more than ten anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine protests outside the Russian Embassy and at Downing Street.

Photographs confirmed his presence at at least six separate events, showing him holding placards reading "Kick Russia out of the UN" and "Free all political prisoners" and carrying a large Ukrainian flag.

He visited the Alexei Navalny memorial on two occasions, once in spring 2024 and again in spring 2025.

He also volunteered as a video editor for the Russian Democratic Society and made a single Bitcoin donation of just over £22 to a Ukrainian army fundraiser after December 2023.

The Home Office accepted that AD held anti-government views but argued his profile was too low to attract official attention, that his social media posts used untraceable accounts, that his donation was not publicly linked to his name, and that at protests he was simply "a face in the crowd" with no specific or prominent role.

Upper Tribunal Judge Hirst rejected that case, giving full weight to expert evidence from Dr Rano Turaeva-Hoehne of Ludwig Maximilian University, whose expertise the Home Office did not challenge.

Dr Turaeva-Hoehne's report noted that Russian law, since March 2022, has defined public criticism of the war broadly enough to encompass social media posts and protest slogans, treating such expression as a criminal offence, and that no fewer than 1,300 individuals had faced prosecution for their opposition to the war.

She warned that Ukraine-related donations are treated as support for a hostile power, citing a programmer sentenced to 15 years in August 2025 for a small donation to Ukraine and the arrest of Ksenia Karelina over a small donation to a Ukrainian charity.

Her conclusion was that AD's profile was "significantly above that of an ordinary returning Russian national."

Judge Hirst found that the small size of the embassy demonstrations — typically between 15 and 30 people visible in photographs — meant participants were easily photographed and identifiable, and that there was a realistic possibility the protests had been monitored by Russian authorities using facial recognition.

The judge determined that it was unreasonable to require AD to conceal his political beliefs, his activities in the UK, or the grounds of his asylum claim under border questioning, and that his overall history meant there was a genuine risk he would face detention and prosecution.

The appeal was allowed on asylum grounds.