This interesting article is from Meduza, an international publication released in Russian and English. It tells the stories of twelve refugees who are seeking official refugee status in Russia. They talk about how and why they arrived in Russia, and the challenges of living in there while stuck in immigration limbo.
“Twenty-six million people around the world have official refugee status, but only 487 of them live in Russia. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are engaged in the Russian government’s asylum application process at any given time, but it’s vanishingly rare for an application to be accepted. This is in part because … the Russian government refuses to recognize armed conflicts and persecution as valid causes for granting asylum…”
You can read the article here: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/09/01/better-this-than-war