Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2025-005090
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/58006/2024
LP/02857/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

6th July 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NEVILLE

Between

BA
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: No attendance or representation
For the Respondent: Mr D Simpson, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 26 January 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity.

No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant is a national of Russia who entered the United Kingdom on 19 September 2021 with leave as a Tier 5 Seasonal Worker, valid until 19 March 2022. He overstayed and on 16 November 2022 he was detained. On 25 November 2022 he made a protection claim that was refused on 8 March 2024.
2. The appellant’s protection claim was made on the basis that he is a conscientious objector to participation in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. He maintains that, if returned, he faces a real risk of being conscripted into the Russian Armed Forces and required to participate in, or be associated with, acts contrary to the basic rules of human conduct. He further asserts a real risk of disproportionate punishment as a draft evader, and that the Russian state does not in practice allow for conscientious objection. He also relies on repeated visits to his family home by military officials in 2022, as attested in a letter he claims to have received from his mother.
3. The respondent accepted the appellant’s identity and nationality but did not accept that he had ever been the subject of a call up notice or that he was of adverse interest to the Russian authorities. The respondent considered the appellant’s account to be inconsistent with evidence concerning Russia’s conscription procedures, noted the absence of any documentary corroboration.
4. The appellant’s appeal was heard by the First-tier Tribunal (“FtT”) on 27 June 2025. At the outset of submissions, the respondent’s presenting officer made concessions recorded at [31] of the FtT’s decision, namely that conscientious objection could amount to a Convention reason and that, if conscripted, the appellant would be required to engage in acts contrary to humanitarian law. The FtT accordingly treated the central issue as whether the appellant was, or had been, the subject of conscription. It found that he had not, and by a decision promulgated on 12 August 2025 dismissed the appeal.
5. The appellant sought permission to appeal, relying principally on (i) a material mistake of fact concerning his age and continuing eligibility for conscription; (ii) errors in the FtT’s assessment of the conscription evidence, including treatment of irregular mobilisation practices; and (iii) an erroneous approach to corroborative evidence, in particular the letter from his parents. Permission was granted on a renewed application, the permission judge finding it arguable that the FtT had made a material mistake of fact as to the appellant’s age and draft eligibility, had arguably treated the absence of a summons as determinative despite evidence of irregular conscription, and may have mistaken the oral evidence relating to the family letter.
6. The appellant was represented at the time his appeal was lodged with the Upper Tribunal but his representatives have since withdrawn. Despite notice of the hearing being properly served upon his home address, confirmed by Mr Simpson to match that in Home Office records, he did not attend. Applying rule 38, I am satisfied that the appellant was notified or the hearing. There is no reason to consider that it would not be in the interests of justice to continue in his absence; he has taken no steps to secure alternative representation or seek an adjournment for that purpose, and the Tribunal has the benefit of his professionally drafted grounds of appeal.
Grounds 1 and 2
7. These grounds can be taken together, and concern the FtT’s treatment of conscription in Russia.
The appellant’s case
8. At [32] the FtT observed that:
“An article appearing in Europe news … shows that conscription has now been raised from twenty‑seven to thirty. However, the appellant has just crossed that high threshold. It follows from this that unless I accept that the appellant is the subject of conscription already, he would not have a claim to refugee status on the basis of his fear of future conscription into military service.”
9. The judge therefore proceeded on the basis that the appellant had already exceeded the upper age limit for conscription. The grounds first argue that the FtT’s arithmetic was wrong, but I find that the FtT was correct to find that the appellant had turned 30 just before the date of hearing.
10. The second argument has more merit, being that the FtT did not consider whether a man of the appellant’s age might still face a reasonable likelihood of future conscription; instead, it treated the determinative question as whether the appellant could show that he was already the subject of conscription at the material time. In doing so, the appellant argues that the FtT failed to take into account country evidence contained in the CPIN ‘Russian Federation: Military service’ dated July 2023, which at 15.7.5 states:
“Sources reported on numerous irregularities in the implementation of the mobilisation order ... including drafting people above the age stipulated for mobilisation according to particular military ranks ... people who have passed the draft age ... people physically unfit for military service ... and who had been previously exempted from military service for health reasons ... people who had not performed military service before ... people who were enrolled as full-time students ... fathers of three ... or four or more children ... “
11. The FtT did consider irregular conscription, and evidence that the authorities were dispensing with advance summons and “were picking people up at places like Moscow and St Petersburg” but held that the appellant had failed to provide evidence that the same was happening in his home area of the Urals. This led to the FtT rejecting that there would have been “no service of a notice to the appellant, whether by post or at personal visits or some other means”. The failure to provide such a notice was a principal reason why the appellant was disbelieved.
12. Those findings are likewise criticised as contrary to evidence contained in the CPIN, which includes reports of irregular conscription across Russia, with no reason to consider the Urals as excluded, and numerous reports of conscription raids on homes at night, on public transport and in the streets.
13. Finally under Ground 2, the FtT referred to the existence of an online portal on which conscription notices can be received. The FtT is said to have drawn an inference from the appellant’s failure to register on the portal to check if he had received such a notice.
The respondent’s case
14. The respondent, in a rule 24 response and through Mr Simpson at the hearing, first argues that the FtT was entitled to place significance on the lack of any evidence showing irregular conscription in the Urals as undermining the appellant’s account. The CPIN provided evidence for irregular conscription in large cities, not in rural towns and villages such as those in the appellant’s home area.
Consideration
15. Appellate interference in findings of fact will only be justified if they are plainly wrong: Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464 at [2]. That caution extends to the evaluation of those facts, such as undertaken by the FtT here. It will likewise be assumed that the FtT had regard to all the relevant evidence before it unless its reasoning shows otherwise.
16. Applying the above principles, I nonetheless consider that the FtT erred as claimed in the grounds. Section 15.7 of the CPIN and its subparagraphs refers to numerous places in Russia where irregular conscription has taken place; many are not large cities such as those quoted by the FtT, and there is no indication that rural areas are spared. They span Russia, from large cities to small towns, from Volgograd in the east to Vladivostok in the west, and it was not rationally open to the FtT to hold that because one area was not mentioned that it was somehow excluded from risk, especially given the other evidence of how widespread the practice had become.
Conclusion
17. The above error of law is sufficient to render the FtT’s findings unsafe, and its decision must be set aside.
18. I need not consider the other grounds, save to observe that Ground 3, asserting that the FtT mistook the appellant’s evidence on how he had received a letter from his mother, was accepted by the respondent as being correct. This supports the conclusion that no findings of fact can be usefully preserved and the appeal must be re-heard; this was accepted by Mr Simpson in any event. Given the extent of fact-finding required and that it would be unfair to deprive the appellant of the two-tier appellate structure in the present circumstances, I consider that the correct disposal is to remit the appeal to the FtT for re-hearing.
19. Mr Simpson argued that when the appeal is re-heard the respondent should be permitted to resile from its concession recorded at [4] above. I consider that this is a matter that should properly be decided by the FtT, and it is incumbent on the respondent to promptly make an appropriate application.
20. This being a protection appeal, the integrity of the UK asylum appeal justifies derogation from the principle of open justice. I continue the anonymity order made by the FtT.
Notice of Decision
(i) The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error of law and is set aside.
(ii) The case is remitted to a differently constituted First-tier Tribunal for re-hearing with no facts preserved.

J Neville

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

29 June 2026