Belarusian Leu Mikheyeu Deported from Georgia to Armenia, Where He Was Also Detained

Reform.news Editorial Team · 26 September 2026, 10:32

https://reform.news/en/belarusian-leu-mikheyeu-deported-from-georgia-to-armenia-where-he-was-also-detained/

Belarusian citizen Leu Mikheyeu, who had been awaiting asylum in Georgia since 2021, was deported to Armenia. He was detained on the Armenian side because he is wanted under an interstate search requested by the Belarusian authorities, Mikheyeu told Pozirk.

He said that on September 25, he went to the Migration Department of Georgia’s Interior Ministry in Martkopi to replace his temporary identity document. Officials accepted his documents, but when he returned, department staff told him he needed to travel to Tbilisi “for an interview”.

Mikheyeu said he managed to send a brief message to human rights defender Raman Kisliak, after which his phone was taken away. He was kept in an office in Tbilisi for about two hours while they waited for an interpreter.

“A case manager dealing with my issue showed up and said I was an illegal immigrant, that my document, my ID card, whose validity had not yet expired, did not matter at all,” the activist described the situation.

Mikheyeu was offered a choice: either to be “thrown out of Georgia in handcuffs” or to voluntarily choose a country to which he would leave. He refused to return to Belarus and asked to be allowed to remain in Georgia at least until October 9, when his document was due to expire. Georgian security forces refused.

Mikheyeu ultimately chose Armenia himself. He said he was driven to the border and handed over to the Armenian side. He was not shown a court decision ordering his deportation, and he did not understand the Georgian-language documents he was made to sign.

“They kept taking me from one office to another. A doctor came and made me strip down to my underwear — it was awful. Then we went home, I packed some things, and we went to the department. After that, they brought me here [to the border] in a police van and dumped me,” he said.

Mikheyeu was detained at the Armenian border because he was listed in the CIS interstate wanted database at Minsk’s request.

Human rights defender Raman Kisliak said he spent the day trying to establish Mikheyeu’s whereabouts with the Georgian authorities.

“While we were looking for Leu, he was being held incommunicado, without contact with the outside world. This was effectively an enforced disappearance. It did not last long, but he was completely without rights. He was not given the opportunity to contact lawyers or receive the protection of the law and his rights; he was forcibly deported,” he said.

According to Kisliak, it was only after the incident that they learned that an appellate court had issued some kind of ruling in Mikheyeu’s case in July, possibly ordering his deportation. Human rights defenders have not yet been able to obtain the ruling itself.

Mikheyeu has been in Georgia since 2021 and has taken part in rallies related to Belarus. According to Kisliak, the Belarusian also received threats from KGB officers.

Georgia has not granted asylum to any Belarusian applicant. In the first half of 2026, 24 Belarusians were deported from the country. In June this year, a former Belarusian political prisoner whose name has not been disclosed became the first person to be deported from Georgia to Armenia.