Vadim said he fell into depression last month after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military draft that would send hundreds of thousands of conscripts to fight in Ukraine.
“I was silent,” said the 28-year-old engineer, explaining that he simply stopped talking while working. “I was angry and scared.”
When Russia Invades Ukraine starting in February, Vadim says he took to the streets in Moscow to protest – but Putin’s September 21 order to send at least 300,000 people into combat seems a point of no return.
“We don’t want this war,” Vadim said. “We couldn’t change a thing in our country, even though we tried.”
He decided he had only one option left. A few days later Putin’s Draft Challenger, he bid farewell to his grandmother in tears and left his home in Moscow – possibly forever.
Vadim and his friend Alexei went as fast as they could to Russia’s border with the former Soviet republic. Kazakhstanwhere they waited in line for three days to get through.
“We ran away from Russia because we want to live,” says Alexei. “We were afraid that we might be sent to Ukraine.”
Both men asked to remain anonymous, to protect loved ones left behind in Russia.
Last week, in Kazakhstan’s commercial capital Almaty, they lined up with more than 150 recently arrived Russians outside the government registration center – part of an exodus of promissory cowers.
Foot vote: More than 200,000 Russians have come to Kazakhstan to watch Putin’s enlistment announcementaccording to the Kazakh government.
And it’s not hard to spot Russians new to the main railway station in Almaty. Every hour, it seems, young Slavic men step out of the train, backpacking, looking a little dazed while checking their phones for directions.
They come from cities all over Russia: Yaroslavl, Togliati, St. Petersburg, Kazan. When asked why they left, all said the same thing: mobilize.
“It’s not something I want to get into,” says a 30-year-old computer programmer named Sergei. He sat on a bench outside the train station with his wife, Irina. The couple, clutching their backpacks and sleeping mats, said they hope to visit Turkey and hope to obtain a Schengen visa to Europe.
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