14 L.M. AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT D. Situation of Syrian nationals in Russia 1. Situation of asylum seekers 68. On 30 August 2013 the Federal Bailiff Service issued a circular letter to its regional branches, according to which no entry was possible into Syrian territory in view of the hostilities there and therefore instructed them to report any problems arising with the execution of court judgments ordering expulsion to Syria to its head office. 69. The FMS produced statistics about the number of Syrian citizens claiming refugee status and territorial asylum in Russia between 1 January 2011 and 1 November 2014. According to these figures, a total of 1,714 people from Syria had claimed refugee status in Russia; none had been granted it. Over the same period, 3,165 such people had sought temporary asylum and 2,523 had been granted it. 70. On 28 October 2014 the human rights NGO Civic Assistance issued an information paper about the situation of Syrian refugees in Russia, which stated that the FMS had started to grant temporary asylum to Syrian nationals in 2013. By 1 September 2014, about 2,200 people had been granted temporary asylum. Civic Assistance estimated that this represented about a tenth of the number of Syrians who had arrived in Russia fleeing the conflict. The report listed the reasons why many others had been unable to obtain this status, including practical problems such as access, a lack of information and interpreting services, the policy of some regions to refuse asylum claims altogether and so forth. The report stated that the FMS, while granting asylum status to many Syrian nationals, at the same time continued to treat others as ordinary administrative offenders and supported their expulsion to Syria, even though it was impossible to carry out. In 2014 the FMS’s position towards Syrian asylum seekers hardened. Numerous decisions from various regions had been brought to the attention of Civic Assistance. They showed that the decisions to reject had systematically referred to the absence of individual reasons for asylum. 2. Russian courts’ decisions in individual cases 71. On 13 December 2013 a judge of the Supreme Court, acting in supervisory review procedure, altered the decisions of the Pyatigorsk Town Court and the Stavropol Regional Court which had ordered fine and administrative removal of M.A.R. (the decision had entered into force on 29 May 2013). The judge of the Supreme Court referred to the international instruments prohibiting torture and ill-treatment and gave due weight to the claimant’s arguments that he could not return in view of the hostilities. The judge further noted the circular letter of 30 August 2013 of the Federal Bailiff Service and a letter of the Stavropol regional ombudsman about the civil war and dire humanitarian situation in Syria. On the strength of the