A Ukrainian national requested international protection in France. In support of his application, he claimed that he feared being exposed to serious harm due to the armed conflict prevailing in Ukraine and the advance of Russian troops near Sumy, his hometown. He also claimed that he lived in Sumy until 2014, when the economic hardship of the Donbas war forced him to find intermittent work in France, finally settling there irregularly in 2020. His brother is currently fighting in the war, and his only other family is his elderly mother, who remained in Sumy. He claimed to have no possibility of getting support from the authorities.

On 21 January 2025, the Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) rejected his application for international protection and the applicant filed an appeal before the National Court of Asylum requesting to be recognised as a refugee or to be granted subsidiary protection.

The National Court of Asylum granted the applicant subsidiary protection, reasoning that the intense and escalating violence in Sumy in the previous year created a real risk of serious harm to civilians. The level of violence was classified by the court as of exceptional intensity, in the light of the unprecedented security and humanitarian deterioration observed in Sumy since the summer of 2024. 

The court first observed that the applicant had provided detailed and credible information about his origins from Sumy and his trips to France. Moreover, despite his travels, he had managed to prove that he maintained strong ties to Sumy, because he resided there between stays abroad and because his mother still lived there, as confirmed by supporting documents submitted (recent utility bills). According to the court, those factors proved that any return to Ukraine would be to the region of Sumy, and consequently his application was examined against the situation prevailing there.

Then, the court examined the grounds for subsidiary protection, as it considered that the applicant had not raised circumstances proving a well-founded fear of persecution under the scope of refugee protection. In that regard, the court recalled that it was not necessary for the applicant to prove that he was specifically targeted, but only that the degree of generalised violence of the armed conflict was of such level that a civilian returned to the country or region of origin would, solely because of his presence, run a real risk of being subject to a serious threat as provided under Article 15 (c) of the recast Qualification Directive (QD). The court also referred to Article 15(c) of the QD, as interpreted by the CJEU in the case CF and DN v Bundesrepublik Deutschland, (C-901/19, 10 June 2021) which clarified that the existence of such a threat cannot be made conditional on the ratio between the number of victims and the total population of that area reaching a given threshold. Instead, all the circumstances of the case must be considered, such as the intensity of the armed confrontations, the level of organisation of the armed forces involved, the duration of the conflict, the geographical extent of the situation of violence, or any intentional aggression against civilians.

In the case, the CNDA classified the conflict in Russia as an international armed conflict within the meaning of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Moreover, it referred to various reports which indicated the number of casualties in the conflict. For example, according to the NGO ACLED, there have been 158,327 security incidents across Ukraine since February 2022, including damages to schools and hospitals. Moreover, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, there had been 43,610 civilian casualties by 31 March 2025, and according to UNHCR, the conflict has caused the displacement of at least 10 600 000 Ukrainians.

However, the court considered that, although the situation in Ukraine was characterised by a significant level of violence, there were many regional disparities in terms of the level of violence and the impact on civilian population. Therefore, it considered that the mere argument of being a Ukrainian national could not suffice to be granted international protection. Instead, the situation in the specific area where the person would return must be considered to determine if they would face a real risk of serious harm there or while traveling there. Moreover, the court found that, since all of Ukraine was affected by international armed conflict and widespread violence, it was not appropriate to reject protection claims based on the idea that the person could safely live in another part of the country.

Regarding the violence in Sumy, the court found that, despite the reorientation of Russian troops towards the east of the country at the end of March 2022, the region continued to be the target of a significant number of security incidents, mostly bombings and remote strikes, with a particular upsurge in violence since the summer of 2024, as estimated by ACLED. In particular, in 2024, incidents in Sumy accounted for almost 60% of all incidents since the beginning of the conflict, making the region the second with the most incidents after Donetsk. Moreover, according to ACLED the number of civilian casualties has also drastically increased in the region in 2024, and according to IOM, the region has one of the highest numbers of internally displaced persons. Finally, citing media outlets such as RFI, Le Monde, France Info and France 24, the court mentioned that since the end of 2024, the front line has been approaching Sumy and that after Russia's recent takeover of a large part of the neighbouring Kursk region, the attacks on Sumy were intensifying.

For the above reasons, the CNDA concluded that the ongoing international armed conflict in Ukraine gave rise to a situation of indiscriminate violence in Sumy, from where the applicant originated and where he had set the centre of his interests. Moreover, the level of this violence was classified by the court as exceptional intensity, in the light of the unprecedented security and humanitarian deterioration observed since the summer of 2024. Thus, the applicant, whose status as a civilian was established, would run, in the event of his return to Sumy, solely because of his presence on that territory, a real risk of suffering a serious and individual threat to his life or person. This risk is because of violence which may extend to persons irrespective of their personal situation, without being able to rely on the effective protection of the authorities.

Consequently, the applicant was granted subsidiary protection.