March 12, 2026

Kazakhstan will not deport 17-year-old Russian who fled the country due to anti-war stance

The appellate collegium of the West Kazakhstan Regional Court partially satisfied the complaint of 17-year-old Russian Timur Turkov and overturned the decision on his deportation from Kazakhstan. This is reported by "Ural Week" and "Azattyk Asia". The collegium upheld the verdict, according to which the teenager was found guilty of illegally crossing the border. But the court overturned the expulsion from the country imposed as punishment. Valentina Turkova, Timur's grandmother, was present at the court session of the regional collegium. Answering the judge's questions, she said that his life would be in danger upon his return to Russia. "It should be described separately how the employee of the Russian consulate fought to send Timur to Russia. Under what close supervision he took the leadership of the children's center, the state lawyer, his grandmother, how he tried to direct in court, demanding the removal of private lawyer Aigul Orynbekova! But the crocodile in the face of Putin's Russia had to snap its jaws in vain," wrote Tamara Eslyamova, editor-in-chief of the "Ural Week" newspaper. 17-year-old Timur Turkov is a native of Komi. In the autumn of 2025, he fled from Russia to Kazakhstan "due to the militarization of schools" and rejection of the war against Ukraine. He crossed the border illegally, reaching it on foot and by hitchhiking. There he met two men and asked them to call the border guards, who took him to the border checkpoint. After that, Turkov was placed in the Center for Support of Children in Difficult Life Situations. Previously, the teenager lived in the village of Letki, Komi Republic. According to Turkov, his grandmother and grandfather, who became official guardians after his mother's death, do not condemn the war and would not have allowed him to travel to another country. In December 2025, the juvenile court of Uralsk found Turkov guilty of illegally crossing the border. He was fined, ordered to be expelled from the country to Russia, and banned from entering for five years.