Belarusian citizen served 12 years in Russia for murder. When they started to deport him, it turned out he was not a citizen of Belarus
Mulyavichius turned out to be a Lithuanian, but cannot pay the consular fee for document restoration due to sanctions.
In Russia, a man caught between three countries has been held behind bars for over a year at a deportation center. Russian authorities consider this Mulyavichius a citizen of Belarus, while he insists he is a citizen of Lithuania, but they cannot deport him — partly due to a 25 euro consular fee that cannot be paid.
Served 12 years — and fell into new imprisonment
In 2012, recidivist Mulyavichius was sentenced by a Russian court for murder to 12 years in a strict regime colony. He served the full term and was released in November 2024.
When a foreigner is released, he is usually deported to his homeland — because why would Russia need a criminal?
As a result, on the very day Mulyavichius was released from the colony, he was placed in a special facility for foreigners near Tver. Since then, the court has been extending his detention term again and again.
Belarus does not confirm, Lithuania requires identification
The main problem is that the man has no identity document, and it's unclear whose citizen he is.
Belarusian authorities informed Russian authorities that they have no data on this person's Belarusian citizenship — a separate procedure is needed to clarify this. The Lithuanian embassy replied that there is a record of a person with matching data in Lithuania's population databases, but without a photograph, it's impossible to confirm that it's the same person — an identification procedure is required.
The man himself explains that he lived in Belarus from 1981 to 1993. Afterwards, he moved to Lithuania, where he received a passport in 1994. He lost it, and then moved to Russia, where he lived. And periodically served time.
The Russian court, however, deemed that there was no evidence of Lithuanian citizenship, and consequently officially designated him a citizen of Belarus.
25 Euro fee and banking isolation
When the Lithuanian side finally expressed readiness to issue a return certificate, it turned out that a consular fee of 25 euros had to be paid for it. The man has no money of his own. Russian authorities appealed to the embassy with a request to issue the document without payment of the fee due to the person's difficult financial situation, but were refused: there were no grounds for exemption from the fee.
An additional hitch is that, according to the embassy's response, the fee must be paid with a foreign bank card, as the details are unsuitable for Russian banks. Given Russia's disconnection from the Western banking system, this makes paying 25 euros a separate, unsolvable task. That is why, as it follows from the materials, since May 2025, the Russian side has completely stopped taking steps on the case — there is simply no way to pay the fee.
Deadlock: no way to deport even with a document
But even if the certificate is issued, the next problem arises: the document is valid for only 15 days, and it's practically impossible to arrange transportation within this period. There are no direct flights from Russia to Lithuania due to the war Russia is waging in Ukraine, so the authorities are considering the option of deportation via Kaliningrad.
The man himself did not particularly object to the extension of his detention — he said he was ready to wait a little longer if there were real actions to finally take him to Lithuania, and was even willing to go to the embassy himself to expedite the paperwork. He has no close relatives in Russia, nor any registration; his ex-wife and adult children live in Belarus, but he does not maintain a relationship with them.
Mulyavichius's story was last mentioned in Russian court documents in 2025. It is unknown whether he was eventually sent to Lithuania.