Then and Now

Tales from Last Year's Autumn Mobilization Migration

Last September, after a fall mobilization was announced in Russia, an estimated 500,000+ young Russians fled the country to avoid being sent to fight in Russia's War on Ukraine. We asked a few who fled to share their story from last year, and an update on where they are now.

NIKITA, 27, MODEL, MOSCOW-TO-BALI

On one hand, it was a relief to have gotten out, but on the other, I keep seeing my mother and sister slowly descending the stairwell behind me and waving goodbye. They were saying: “Nikita, come on, we’ll come visit,” but it was unclear how long I’d be leaving for and whether we’d ever see one another again. The day I was scheduled to fly out, my grandmother had a stroke and almost died. It was just awful. Grandma was lying there; Mama was somehow holding it together, even though it was her mother; my sister was crying. I became hysterical; my hands were shaking, and I was a total mess when I left. And the whole way, it was as if this wasn’t happening to me: I couldn’t feel the ground under my feet and didn’t know what would happen next.

I bought my ticket to Bali the day after the mobilization was announced, September 22. I could only get one for October 3, and as the days passed it became increasingly scary – it felt as if an unsparing, merciless train was barreling toward me, would run right over me, and that would be it. Soon they started writing that the borders would be closed on September 28, and the tickets by then cost more than R300,000 [$5,000 at the time]. Then I got in touch with my acquaintance, Vika Gok, who had launched the On a One-Eyed Goat initiative – they help people who need to urgently leave buy tickets and arrange the logistics.

I wrote that I had doubts, but Vika told me I shouldn’t even contemplate staying – just leave as soon as possible. They bought me a ticket to Murmansk and gave me the contact information for someone who could take me over the border to Norway (I’ve got a Schengen visa). In the past, you could hire these operators for two thousand rubles [$35], but they wanted to charge me seventy [$1170]. In the end, we agreed on thirty [$500].

There were military guys at the border crossing checking men’s passports – this was the diciest part. They go into the database to check whether the military commissariat has prohibited you from leaving.

At the Norwegian border they gave me a thorough going-over: where was I going, why, do I smoke weed, do I use amphetamines? They looked in my eyes; two dogs sniffed me. I was lucky: my traveling companion – someone One-Eyed Goat had put me in touch with – had used some contacts to get us the necessary paperwork for not much money. It’s complicated to book a hotel. They have to be fully paid in advance, and you need a seal [on the receipt]. The border guards actually called there to check. I don’t know how he managed that.

During your trip out of Russia, you feel as if you’re in some sort of eerie black-and-white film: it was a cloudy, rainy morning, the desolate North, and you’re in some strange shuttle bus. And then you cross the border into Norway and the sun comes out and suddenly it turns out there are mountains there and some super-stylish border-crossing point, super-stylish beautiful police and you think, “What’s going on? Makes no sense: why is everything so beautiful? It’s the same land, the same North.” Then a Norwegian bus takes you from the border crossing and there are waterfalls [Kirkenes’ mountain rivers], a rainbow, and it’s as if you’re in paradise. I even got sleepy knowing that it was all over now.

Ever since the war started, you try to push away your own worries and pain – after all, people are dying somewhere, and you think that everything with you is more-or-less fine. But to be honest, this whole situation was like a punch in the gut. I’ve just made it to Bali, and I did it on a one-eyed goat! It’s my second day here, and I’m not even carrying my telephone with me. I’m giving myself a chance to decompress, to breathe, while I recover. I don’t have any money. It all went toward getting here. I’m living with friends.

Yesterday they took me to an amazing place on the beach. There was a party celebrating the full moon – a time for cleansing, according to local traditions, and I felt at peace. It’s a strange, schizophrenic feeling: I feel good here, but back home something terrible is happening, and you can’t understand why the people around you are so happy.

***

Nikita is still living in Bali. He still hasn’t been able to see his family since leaving, but his mother and sister are planning to visit him soon. It was hard to make a living as a model there, so he decided to turn his long-time interest in esoteric healing into a profession. For now, he is studying to become a runologist and consults for his own clients. As he puts it, he only earns enough to cover his basic needs, but he’s very happy with the way his personal story is developing. Nikita believes that the mobilization situation has played a positive role in his life. During his first months in Bali he met a girl with whom he set out on a journey not knowing how it would turn out. They visited India, Vietnam, Nepal, Cambodia, the Maldives, and Thailand. They also thought about returning to Russia. But the couple ultimately grew tired of roaming and wanted to return home as soon as possible, to Bali.

ARSENY, 31, DESIGNER, MOSCOW-TO-TBILISI

“Hey, let me have a ride!” There were about five of them – I don’t remember exactly. One grabbed my bike by the handlebars, the rest pressed in on either side. “Did you buy the bike in town?” “Where are you going?” “Where are you from?” “So, you decided to escape?” “What did you pay for the bike?” “Gimme a tenner for a taxi?” “Hey, give me 500 rubles!”

Up to then, I’d just been walking my bike because a very strong wind had risen up in the Terek River gorge and was blowing sand and small stones into my face. It was midnight, I had a steep climb ahead of me and my legs were already sore. I’d forgotten a flashlight and was walking in the dark. And there I was, in the middle of the road, with half my view blocked by mountains and stars sparkling in the gaps between them, a sharp drop to one side, and the sound of the Terek rushing down below. I was now surrounded by a group of Ossetians and had no idea what they had in mind. One sticks his hand in his pocket. What does he have there? A knife, a pistol, nothing? But my main thought was that I didn’t want to give them anything.

A bicycle, sneakers, jeans, a t-shirt, a backpack, a sweater, a jacket, a scarf, sunglasses, a little volume of Borges, a little book of Lorca, a notebook, a Zoom H5 audio recorder, a laptop, a power bank, a harmonica, Finn the Human – that’s what I had with me, along with a bit of money.

A car came into sight from around the bend, I raised my finger, the car stopped, I threw my bike in the trunk (there were already two in there) and hopped inside. For 200 rubles I got a ride to where the traffic jam leading to the border crossing started.

For another two hours or so I walked with my bicycle, the wind blowing sand into my eyes. I then realized I could put on my sunglasses, even if it was the middle of the night. They made it a bit harder to see, but certainly helped me feel better. Bicycles were let through first, and that part of the trip turned out to be easier for me than for those who were in cars or on foot: the closer I came to the border crossing, the more upset people looked. Some were sleeping on the ground covered with scarves, and you realized that a human catastrophe could come at any moment. For now, nobody had started shooting to disperse the crowd and no one had died yet, but there was a feeling that it could start any moment.

I and some other bicyclists reached the windows [the Russian border checkpoint], and we let the women through first. The border guard cracked a joke along the lines of, “Well, okay, at least in that regard you’re still real men.” I don’t remember his exact words, but the idea was that we were ignobly evading defending our motherland. At the window they asked bureaucratic questions like from where-to-where, purpose of trip. There were smirks, of course. I said, “Tourism and recreation,” something like that. “For long?” I think I said “Till spring.”

At first I felt an adrenaline rush that they’d let me out, but after that the exhaustion set in. Dawn had broken. I only remember that I was walking, pushing my bike, my legs hurt, my backpack was heavy, and my sneakers were giving me blisters. And there were Ossetians and Georgians on bikes (some had two) there to greet me, asking how much I wanted for mine.

Soon the cars came to a halt at the final bottleneck, and I passed through a fume-filled tunnel and found myself in purgatory: a narrow stretch of road bordered by two tunnels. This was where the real back-up extending to the Georgian border started, a little over a mile long. Hundreds of drowsy people, fistfights, attempts at self-organization, fainting.

Once I came out into the open air, the sun rose from behind the mountains and I finally saw the flag of Georgia. But I also saw how slowly the line was moving. I didn’t have the strength to talk to anyone, but once I felt that my neighbors had seen enough of me that they’d remember me, I stepped out of the queue, leaned my bike up against a rock, and lay down on the rock to sleep, wrapping my backpack around my arm.

It was six in the evening before I finally entered Georgia.

I’ll never forget the bicycle graveyard in no man’s land. There were bicycles everywhere – whole, broken, spare parts – and the closer we got to the Georgian border, the more there were. They were taken apart right there and their pieces were reassembled into Frankensteins and taken to the Russian side.

Some people had come on expensive racing bikes, but mine was nothing special. At one point my sister had given it to me – pink with butterflies. It was silly, but now it represents a treasured memory, so I didn’t sell it.

***

Arseny lived in Georgia for half a year, at first staying with friends and later in a rented apartment. But renting was difficult: he didn’t manage to find steady work and money problems became a deciding factor. In early April he flew back to Russia. He thought he was just there to visit relatives, but he wound up staying. As of late summer 2023, despite predictions a new wave of mobilizations was coming, Arseny was still in Moscow and for now does not plan to leave. He says that he’s become more fatalistic. He also better understands how to minimize his risks: by not living where he is officially registered; by not answering calls from unfamiliar numbers; by keeping handy the chat-bot of an organization that helps people who want to hide from the military commissariat. So his “tourism and recreation” actually did come to an end last spring, as he had so casually predicted to the border guards. Alas, the pink bicycle, with which Arseny was so reluctant to part, was left behind in Georgia.

ALEXANDER, 37, SOFTWARE ENGINEER, MAYKOP-TO-YEREVAN

I’m Ukrainian. I was born in Kharkiv and spent the first half of my life there. I’m also an officer: I never served, but I graduated from university military training. After the war started, they called me several times, asking me to join the service, to go work in the “liberated” territories for lots of money.

So, when my grandmother called me on the morning of September 24 (I’m officially registered at her address), she told me that there’d been a visit from military recruiters. I wasn’t sure whether they’d left a mobilization notice or were just making another attempt to recruit me. I didn’t want to check, and within an hour I’d made my decision.

I made it over to some friends who were already preparing to leave at literally the last minute. There were six of us in two cars: two married couples and two men. From Maykop [in the North Caucasus Republic of Adygea], it was easier to drive than fly: it was just a six- or eight-hour drive to the Georgian border, and the closest airports, in Krasnodar and Rostov, were closed due to the war.

The day after we left, I called the military commissariat and they said that yes, they had brought me a mobilization notice. I explained that I under no circumstances had any intention of taking part in that. I said that I had family there (my father and my entire family on my father’s side), but they replied that that made no difference.

The road into Vladikavkaz [the capital of the Russian Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, which borders South Ossetia, a part of Georgia] was constantly being closed to regulate the flow of cars that had already caused a bottleneck at the border. But there were a lot of back roads, and they all had checkpoints that were supposed to only let through cars with local license plates. Others had to pay a bribe to get through. Once we got through for free: we said that we had to get through for work. It probably helped that we were also from the Caucasus.

But that was nothing compared to the traffic jam at the border. The end of the line didn’t move at all. Once you got closer, the line moved a bit quicker: the people who had been there for two or three days were already out of food, money, and patience: they were blocking the road, forming two lanes of cars instead of the five that had formed further back.

When you’re alone, you’re at the mercy of the locals, but when there are 30 of you, it’s better. At first people on foot weren’t let through, and there were people who, right before the border checkpoint, loaded their shuttle vans with 10 to 15 people, charging them 50,000 [$835] each, and took them across the border and then came right back for a new bunch. They were earning about half a million [$8350] a kilometer. After we got organized, we made a deal for them to let through ten cars and two shuttle vans. That sped things up somewhat. There were honest police officers and dishonest ones, and there were dishonest ones who became honest when these volunteer squads confronted them. Order would be restored in the morning, and during the day things were more-or-less okay, but in the evening, after it got dark, hustlers would appear trying to take advantage of the situation however they could.

Our first car was stuck there for three days and the second one for four. At one point we were just 300 meters apart, but they meant an additional 24 hours. I had a gas-powered torch, so we cooked ourselves food and boiled water from a café bathroom. When we fired up the torch, people came up to us and asked us to boil water for them.

We slept when the line was at a standstill, which could be for six or eight hours. If it was moving and someone was really sleepy, we took turns driving. Sometimes people were so sound asleep that when the line started moving, they were left behind as people drove around them, but usually their neighbors would wake them up.

The news spread that there was a car with “Military Commissariat” on the side there to hand out mobilization notices. We were afraid they might take us right from there or just not let us out because the commissariat had sent some sorts of lists to the border.

An armored personnel carrier filled with soldiers came, maybe for crowd control. It was night, almost morning, when we crossed the Russian border – they had just opened it for pedestrians. That meant that there were many thousands of guys, and the border guards just didn’t have time to ask anyone anything. After we were let through, of course, we breathed a sigh of relief, even though we were still stuck in a six- or eight-hour traffic jam. We congratulated each other on now being in Georgia. I remember it was warm.

We went to sleep in a hotel and then – on to Armenia. We had an Armenian friend, so we had a place to stay when we arrived. Now the whole bunch of us friends are renting a house with a view of the mountains, and there’s a garden there. Plums, apples – it’s beautiful. But it’s hard being away from our families.

***

Alexander returned home very quickly, just two months after our conversation, once the situation had somewhat stabilized and he gained a better understanding of how to avoid being mobilized. However, in April 2023 everything changed: the authorities instituted electronic mobilization notices. Whereas it had been easy to avoid being handed a physical notice, electronic notices are considered to have been served from the moment they are placed in a citizen’s online Gosuslugi [Government Services] account. Once that happened, Alexander had to leave again, this time for Istanbul. But he didn’t manage to get permission to stay there, so he is planning to return to Armenia. He says that, in essence, he’s in the same situation he was a year ago: the same uncertainty, although he does have a stable income working in software engineering. He hopes that by the New Year he’ll finally be reunited with his family. The question of where he will settle down is still up in the air.