According to the Anti-War Committee of Russia, its representatives in the cassation court argued that Yulia Emelyanova could be persecuted in Russia for political reasons and subjected to torture. The court, the committee said, found these risks unproven.
The Cassation Court for Administrative Cases in Astana, Kazakhstan, upheld the denial of asylum to the former volunteer of Alexei Navalny’s St. Petersburg штаб. After that, the committee said, there are no legal obstacles left to extraditing Emelyanova to Russia.
Emelyanova was detained at Almaty airport, Kazakhstan, in August 2025, when she was flying from Georgia to Vietnam. In February, Kazakhstan had already approved her extradition to Russia, but then suspended the procedure until the asylum application was considered.
According to human rights defenders, Emelyanova is accused of stealing a phone from a taxi driver in 2021. She denies guilt, and human rights defenders say that the theft report appeared only a month later and that she first saw the phone at the police station.
The same statement from the Anti-War Committee says that in Kazakhstan, the process of coordinating the handover to Russia of Chechen activist Mansur Movlayev has already begun. He has been under extradition arrest in Almaty since May 2025, and in July the court extended his detention by another five months — until January 13, 2027.
According to the committee, Russia is demanding that Movlayev be handed over on charges of extortion, while he himself calls the case fabricated. In September, the statement says, the activist twice attempted to take his own life in pretrial detention; in one of the notes he wrote that he was tired of injustice and would not let Kadyrov’s men torture him again.
The committee also claims that in Chechnya, Movlayev was twice abducted and tortured by security forces, after which he managed to leave Russia using forged documents. Previously, according to human rights defenders, he anonymously passed information to the opposition movement 1ADAT about abductions, torture, and disappearances of Chechen residents, and during his time in hiding, Chechen security forces repeatedly abducted his relatives, including his parents and brother.
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