1 of 1 When training at the front, it often comes down to shooting once Photo: AP/dpa/picture Alliance. When training at the front, it often comes down to shooting once Photo: AP/dpa/picture Alliance
Discreetly dressed and with his hood down, the young Russian looks around. He’s afraid of being discovered, a feeling he’s been living with in the Georgian capital Tbilisi for the past few months. Therefore, he avoids revealing his real name and asks to be called Nikita.
Until February he attended the university in Moscow. As is not uncommon in the country, he had a contract with the Bundeswehr: the Ministry of Defense paid for his studies and guaranteed a place in the student residence. In return, he pledged to serve in the army after completing his studies.
“I signed the contract out of stupidity. Several things were not clear to me. I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to lose three years in the army, I’m going to leave with my college degree as compensation.’
When Nikita received the callup order, he wanted to retire from military service, but the institution rejected his application and proposed a deal: “They transferred me to a command department, where I was supposed to help the commander with paperwork. Then in September they gave me another job: I worked with military technology to repel the enemy in the event of an offensive.”
Realizing that he could be sent to Ukraine at any moment, he decided to leave the country and flee to neighboring Georgia.
“I didn’t want to go to war. Defeating was my only chance.”
He is aware of the risks “that I have to hide from Russia for the rest of my life, that I can never come back”: “I’m not afraid of dying or of ending up in prison. But I just don’t want to have to kill anyone,” he explains.
A lottery called war
Nikita is not an isolated case: human rights activists are filing more than 1,000 lawsuits over alleged defectors, but the actual number of defectors may be much higher, reports Grigory Sverdlin of Idite Lesom, a Russian NGO — whose name can be translated to “Se Manda” — that helps draft evaders escape abroad.
Some are afraid of mobilization, others have already been to the front and no longer want to fight, explains Swerdlin: “We have heard many reports about the chaos that prevails at the front. Sometimes nobody knows where the commanders are. Others say they were simply laid out in the open, with no purpose or order.”
Especially in the third quarter of 2022, when mobilization began, several recruits reported on social media about the irregularities in the training camps and at the front. Something Igor Sandzhiev knows firsthand.
The 46yearold Russian factory worker, who currently lives in Uralsk in western Kazakhstan, is keen to use his real name as he wants his story to be known. It all started when he was called up by the army, ostensibly for a review of his personal information.
However, when he appeared in the office, Sandzhiyev was drafted immediately: that same night he was to report to a Wehrmacht training camp, and a few weeks later he was supposed to be at the front. He felt trapped and decided to run away.
“It was all or nothing for me. I thought: ‘Either I go to prison for several years for leaving the department, or I die somewhere in Ukraine. I’d rather go to jail, I don’t want to take any chances, I don’t want to take part in this lottery called war that President Putin is promoting.’”
Military service as a financial lifeline
A deadly lottery: According to (unverifiable) media reports, the invasion of the neighboring country has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Russians. Many mobilized by President Vladimir Putin’s decree in 2022 were fathers; Many depended on generous wages, especially men from the poorest regions.
Sandzhiev, who comes from the Republic of Kalmykia in southern Russia, confirms this: “Our financial possibilities are limited, wages are not paid. For many, war is the only way to supplement their budget: one has a daughter who is about to go to college, another has taken out a mortgage, a third needs a car.”
Kazakhstan is already his second place of refuge: First he traveled to Belarus, but was caught by the police and sent back to the training camp near Volgograd. He fled a second time, this time to Uralsk, where he applied for asylum. But it was rejected because the requirements were not met: so the verdict.
In addition, the worker was given a sixmonth suspended sentence for illegally crossing the border. He appealed, which was dismissed. Now he is threatened with deportation to Russia.
“For me it will be prison or war”
Denis Zhivago, deputy director of Kazakhstan’s International Human Rights Agency, says this is not an isolated case: More than 20 Russians are waiting for their asylum applications to be examined.
“These people did not cross the border secretly, they are in Kazakhstan legally, but some are wanted.” [na Rússia], weigh on other crowding out restrictions. They are looking for other ways to reach third countries.”
Igor Sandzhiev has no illusions about his future: “I can expect either prison or war in Ukraine. Right now, the state media is telling Russians that there is a shortage of personnel on the front lines and that qualified men must go into battle.”
As for young Nikita, not only is his future in Georgia uncertain, he also doesn’t feel safe in the country, “not because the people here are mean or anything”: “Georgians don’t treat me badly, like a Russian. But here I am still afraid of the Russian state. Sometimes I have nightmares where my old boss knocks on the door and says, ‘Come on, I found you.'”
Despite everything, Igor and Nikita want to try to stay abroad as long as possible.