Some who Fled to Avoid Mobilization are Returning but Say They will Leave Again if Necessary, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 2 – Most of the hundreds of thousands of people who fled the Russian Federation after Putin declared partial mobilization on September 21 are still abroad, but at least a handful have returned, saying they did not want to be apart from their families and declaring that they are thinking about leaving again if the situation continues to deteriorate.

            Getting information about such people is difficult. They don’t want to call attention to themselves and thus make it more likely that Russian officials will come after them, but two men from Kazan who have returned spoke anonymously about their thinking and plans (azatliq.org/a/32133178.html in Tatar; idelreal.org/a/32145032.html in Russian).

            The first, a 38-year-old builder with three children, said he fled in panic to Kazakhstan but returned because he had gone alone and could not bear to live without his children. In the future, if the situation deteriorates, he said, he will leave with his family, probably first to Turkey and then perhaps somewhere in Europe.

            The second, a 28-year-old IT freelancer with two children and a third on the way, said he didn’t want to go in the first place because he had a military exemption but he was urged by family and friends to do so because they said the authorities were ignoring such exemptions and he almost certainly would be taken.

            After ten days in Kazakhstan, he decided it would be better to return because he had no right to leave his family. But he too is ready to leave if he can go with them. “It is much better to leave and live than to go to war and die. Therefore,” he says, he won’t criticize anyone who does and may again join them.