The Migration Agency's decision followed a conclusion from the Swedish Security Service (Säpo), which assessed that issuing the document would run counter to the country's national security interests, according to Makarov himself and The Insider, which reviewed the text of the decision.
Makarov was granted refugee status and permanent residence on 30 June 2011, The Insider reported. He received refugee travel documents in 2014 and 2019, the latter valid until 26 September 2024, and applied for a new one on 17 December 2024.
The Säpo conclusion reached the Migration Agency on 6 February, the decision says. Some of the information it rests on is classified. Makarov was given the chance to respond to the security service's arguments; he disputed them, but the agency ruled that his arguments did not refute Säpo's assessment. The document was then refused without the remaining conditions for issuing it being considered.
Makarov has appealed the refusal, and the complaint has not yet been reviewed. He said disclosing the grounds for the refusal could expose him to criminal liability, but he decided to make the decision public.
According to Makarov, Migration Agency officials read him Säpo's position: that he had allegedly engaged in activity abroad threatening Sweden's security and, once in possession of a travel document, would be able to continue it. No specific country was named. "The only country outside Sweden where I have spent a long time and engaged in any activity is Ukraine," he told The Insider.
"Right now I am in Sweden as in serfdom: I cannot leave anywhere, because I have no official papers to travel outside Sweden," The Insider quoted him as saying.
In August 2025 Makarov was also refused Swedish citizenship, with reference to Säpo's position on national security. He appealed that decision and says he has been waiting for an answer for more than a year.
After the start of the full-scale invasion, Makarov returned to Ukraine in June 2022. He first fought as a volunteer, without a contract or salary, as a submachine gunner in the 95th Separate Air Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, moved to the International Legion in summer 2023, and then to the Siberian Battalion, created on the initiative of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate.
In November 2023 Makarov was wounded near Avdiivka; after treatment he returned to the front and in February 2024 took part in covering the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the city. In March that year he took part in a raid by Russian units into border areas of Russia, where he suffered a severe wound to his arm. In total, he says, he was seriously wounded twice while serving in the Siberian Battalion; after the second wound, mobility in the fingers of his right hand never fully recovered. "Right now I am effectively a person with physical disabilities," he told The Insider.
Makarov left Russia in 2009 because of political persecution, first going to Ukraine. According to Mediazona, in 2006, then a member of the National Bolshevik Party, he received a two-year prison term in a case over a fight with pro-Kremlin activists from the Local movement.