Mikhail still can’t believe his luck. And since he doesn’t quite believe it, he’s scared. Actually he should be on his way to the front or to a military base where he will do a short training before being posted to Ukraine, but in reality he is in Turkey. It was a matter of hours. The same day he landed in Istanbul, a military officer came to his home in Moscow to order his conscription into the Russian armed forces.
“I love my country very much, but not this government. But when I heard on the news that if you refuse to kill people in another country you can be sentenced to 10 years in prison, I knew it was time to go,” Mijaíl explains over the phone, who, for security reasons, asks not to publish his real name and to hide some of the details he shared with EL PAÍS As in many other Russian households, the hours after the decree signed by Vladimir Putin on September 21 were the “partial Mobilization” frantic and agonizing. He knew he could be one of the first to mobilize. He’s 26 years old, athletic, and went through a special unit during his military service. He had all the ballots to get drafted.
More information
“We were three people – my mum, my girlfriend and I – trying to buy a ticket for me, no matter what country it was. We tried about 40 times and there was always an error,” he says. “I even bought a flight to Yekaterinburg to take a bus to Kazakhstan from there. Although I was finally able to buy a ticket to Istanbul,” Mijaíl continues. In the early hours of September 22, he landed in the Turkish metropolis. “I felt free,” he exclaims.
As air services from Russia to European Union countries have been suspended, Turkey has become one of the main destinations for fleeing Russians – to stay or as a stopover to another country – as they do not need a visa. More than 120 flights from various Russian cities land in Turkey daily, but demand has increased so much that Turkish Airlines has swapped the planes it uses for others with larger capacity, company sources have told local press. In the last two weeks it has been practically impossible to get a ticket and those currently in existence exceed 1,000 euros each way. Similarly, Russian company Aeroflot’s website has fewer than four seats available each way for next week’s flights.
“If they send you to Ukraine, you will die”
Subscribe to EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe to
Alexander Dobromislov was a bit more far-sighted. He had wanted to leave his country for a long time. “But at the beginning of the war, the ruble lost so much value that I couldn’t afford a plane ticket,” he laments on the terrace of a café in Istanbul. He made several plans and started saving. On the 20th, when pseudo-referendums were announced in the occupied territories of Ukraine to justify their annexation to Russia, this young Moscow University PhD student in political science sensed that the mobilization – a rumor that had lingered in Russia for months – was about to happen, arrive and get a seat on the plane to Istanbul. “My studies officially ended on September 30th, from then on I could be mobilized. My skills as a political science expert are of no interest to this government, which only needs propagandists. I’m just being used as cannon fodder for them to die at the front. Everyone who has the opportunity to flee does so because they know that if they send you to Ukraine they will die.”
Most flights arriving in Turkey are still packed with tourists – two-thirds of planes from Russia are destined for the cities on the Mediterranean coast – but among the passengers there are a growing number of young men who escape mobilization and don’t Do believe Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s pledge to limit it to 300,000 reservists. “Basically, every man over the age of 18 feels in danger. Because, as much as they called it partial mobilization, they recruit completely at random. People who died two years ago, people over 50, people who have five children. They’re trying to recruit everyone they can,” explains Eva Rapoport, a Russian living in Istanbul who is taking part in the Kovcheg (The Ark) project funded by businessman and opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky to help Russians flee to support their country.
“We have received thousands of inquiries and requests for legal assistance over the past few days,” he explains. Their Telegram group, where they offer advice on leaving Russia, has grown by 65,000 members since the levy was announced. And they have also received hundreds of requests for accommodation in the apartments this organization maintains in Istanbul and in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, where it provides temporary housing until those affected find something more permanent.
Many of the Russians who emigrated to other countries at the start of the conflict because of their opposition to the war have also opened up their homes and are lending mattresses and sofas to their recently fled compatriots. Since the beginning of the year, the number of Russians with residence permits in Turkey has almost doubled, to 109,349, reported by Turkey’s Interior Ministry’s Migration Department on September 29. And they are not all included there, because anyone who has a Russian passport can stay in Turkey for 90 days without registering.
No chance of returning
The most stressful moment political science PhD student Alexander Dobromislov experienced during his flight was when, after passport control at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, he was ordered with many other men to go into a room to check his military status. “It was at its most tense, but they treated us well and even told us we could all move on,” he says. “I don’t think anyone has a problem getting out. That’s probably because, statistically, not many of us left [aunque cientos de miles de personas han abandonado ya el territorio ruso] because they still have a lot of people to recruit in a country of 140 million people. Or maybe Putin prefers those of us who oppose him to leave so we don’t cause trouble. But there are also rumors that they could ban all men of military age from leaving the country, and who knows how long this ban will last,” he muses.
Of those arriving in Istanbul now, most are unclear as to how they will survive: they simply packed their essentials, packed their bags and fled. They also know that they may not be able to return to their country for long periods of time, especially if they have been drafted, since desertion is punishable by ten years in prison, more than the minimum penalty for murder (about six years). “I don’t think I’ll ever see my country again. It’s very painful for me: I leave a son there,” complains Mijaíl: “I don’t have more than 1,000 euros and no plan. But at least I’m free and alive.”
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
read limitless