Police officers of the republic detained and handed over to the Russian military a soldier of the Russian army, Semyon Bazhukov, who escaped from the Russian military base in Priozersk in Kazakhstan.

Before deserting, Bazhukov fought in Ukraine. In 2022, he received Russian citizenship and was drafted into the army. Prior to that, Bazhukov was a stateless person. According to his mother, he fled to Kazakhstan in the summer of 2023. Then he was put on the wanted list. He applied for asylum in Kazakhstan in October last year.

For the first time, Kazakh security forces detained Bazhukov in December 2025. The mother claims that her son was lured to the Russian-Kazakh border under the pretext of “clarifying the status of the wanted list.” On December 13, he was detained and taken to the town of Karabulak, where, according to her, police officers beat and strangled him, putting a bag over his head. On December 17, Bazhukov was handed over to a patrol of the Russian military police, after which he was taken to a military base in Priozersk, where the Sary-Shagan training ground, leased by the Russian army, is located.

Under the supervision of the military police, Bazhukov wrote to friends that “they shouldn’t worry about him.” According to human rights activist Alshansky, Bazhukov was formally enrolled in a local military unit in Priozersk. In January, he contacted human rights activists, and on February 1, he said that they planned to take him to Russia by military transport plane within 24 hours. After that, he decided to run again.

During a trip from Priozersk to Astana, Bazhukov was again detained by Kazakh police. He was taken to the police department of the Shetskiy district in the village of Aksu-Ayuli, Karaganda region, where representatives of the Russian military police have already arrived. Despite the repeated application for asylum, on the night of February 2, the Kazakh security forces handed over the deserter to the Russian military.