Georgia expels Belarusian activist to Armenia after refusing asylum claim

Georgia expelled Belarusian activist Lev Mikheev, who had unsuccessfully been seeking political asylum since 2021. Georgia deported Mikheev to Armenia, where he was briefly detained, but then released.

Mikheev was detained by Georgian migration authorities on 25 September and expelled to Armenia hours later. He had lived in Georgia for five years before he was expelled, he told independent Belarusian media outlet Pozirk.

Tbilisi-based rights group Rights Georgia, which sought to get involved in the case, said it was unable to visit Mikheev in time because of the hours set by the Migration Department. When a lawyer arrived at the department at the start of working hours the following day, they were told that the activist had left the country late the previous night.

Mikheev said that two weeks before his detention, he had gone to Martkopi — a village 30 kilometres east of Tbilisi, where the Migration Department’s reception center is located — to legally renew his locally-issued temporary ID document. Mikheev noted that his application was accepted and he was told to return in two weeks. When he did, the Department told him he had to go with them back to Tbilisi, then took his phone and drove him away.

‘I only managed to send [Tbilisi-based Belarusian human rights activist] Roman [Kislyak] a short message before they took my phone. From that moment on, I was practically like a prisoner’, he said as quoted by Pozirk.

According to Mikheev, at the Migration Department’s office in Tbilisi, a person responsible for his case told him that he was residing in the country illegally and that his identification document, which the activist said was still valid, ‘was completely irrelevant’.

He was reportedly given two options: ‘to be thrown out of Georgia in handcuffs’ or to leave the country voluntarily, an option offered to foreigners detained for allegedly illegally staying in Georgia if they have the necessary travel documents.

Mikheev said he refused to return to Belarus since he was ‘seeking asylum precisely because he was being persecuted in his home country’. He also asked for a short extension to remain in Georgia, at least until 9 October, when his identification document was due to expire, but was rejected.

‘They herded me from office to office. A doctor came and stripped me down to my underwear — it was absolutely horrific. Then we went home, I packed a few things, and we went to the police station’, he said. Mikheev said he was ‘dumped’ on the Georgian–Armenian border.

Before being expelled, he said he was ‘forced to sign a lot of papers’ in Georgian, the meaning of which, as Pozirk noted, he did not understand.

Tbilisi-based rights group Rights Georgia, which sought to get involved in the case, stated it was unable to visit Mikheev in time because of the hours set by the Migration Department. When a lawyer arrived at the department at the start of working hours the following day, they were told that the activist had left the country late the previous night.

Responding to media reports, the Migration Department noted the information had been presented ‘incorrectly and in a distorted manner’, denying that Mikheev did not understand what he was signing.

‘Before signing the documents, he was provided with the relevant information and their contents were explained to him through an interpreter’, the agency said in a statement published on the Interior Ministry’s website on 26 September.

The agency further stated that Mikheev’s 2021 asylum application, which was based on his political activity in Belarus, was rejected in September 2024 because there were ‘no legal grounds for granting him the status’.

Mikheev appealed the rejection, but two courts upheld the decision. The agency noted that, as a result, he ceased to be considered an asylum seeker in June 2026 and was detained three months later for staying in Georgia ‘without a legal basis’.

The department also emphasised that Mikheev chose Armenia himself as a destination — something the activist confirmed, although calling it ‘a choice without a choice’.

‘I was terrified of the option where they would choose the destination country. For example, Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan. So I agreed to Armenia’.

‘I realized they were simply crazy here. It’s difficult to argue with them about anything. Let it be Armenia. And the process started rolling’, Mikheev explained.

At the border, he was briefly detained by Armenian law enforcement. Belarusian media attributed the detention to an interstate search request issued for Mikheev by Belarusian authorities through the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), of which both Armenia and Belarus are members.

According to Mikheev, he was shown documents indicating that Belarusian authorities had opened a criminal case against him on charges of insulting President Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

‘I said, “You know, Lukashenko isn’t president”. They smiled and nodded’, he recalled.

After spending the night at the police station, the activist was sent to Yerevan in the afternoon of 26 September. He said that he was satisfied with how he was treated by the Armenian authorities, in contrast to his experience in Georgia.

Mikheev now plans to seek a legal assessment of the Georgian migration service’s handling of his case. The United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus — the Belarusian government-in-exile — which followed the case, was cited by Pozirk as saying they were setting up legal counsel for Mikheev in Georgia.

‘The most unpleasant thing here is this lack of rights and humiliation of a man who has done nothing illegal’, Mikheev said.

Belarus was swept by brutal state repression in response to mass protests following the 2020 presidential election, which is widely considered to have been rigged by Lukashenka’s government against his main opponent, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Some Belarusians fleeing repression moved to Georgia. While some later left, including for EU states, others remained in the country.