After the announcement of the military mobilization to fight in Ukraine, on September 21, 2022, Ivan Nesterov fled Russia to avoid being forcibly recruited. But six months later he fell into depression and came back. “I left a few days after the announcement of the mobilization, with a mixture of emotions, especially panic,” the 35-year-old man, shaved head and tattooed, who works as a trainer in a Moscow gym, told AFP.
According to his account, he took a plane to the Urals and, from there, a bus to Siberia. Finally, he arrived by car in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, passing through a village called “Ukrainets” (“Ukrainian” in Russian). “An irony of fate,” he quips her. In Kostanai, in northern Kazakhstan, where he settled, he quickly found work in a boxing club. “They didn’t even ask me for my diploma,” he says, surprised. He stayed at the home of a Kazakh family.
According to him, his departure was a kind of “protest” against power, despite the fact that he had never before participated in any demonstration or publicly given his opinion on social networks. “He wanted out of the system at last,” she says.
Hundreds of thousands of young Russians who refused to participate in the campaign in Ukraine left the country following the announcement of the mobilization. Mostly they moved to former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan, where they could travel without a visa.
But almost a year later, some of those exiles are coming back. It is not known exactly how many because most try to be discreet. “Those who have returned consider that the risk [of being recruited] has gone down,” political scientist Konstantin Kalachev told AFP.
In October 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense assured that this “partial” mobilization, ordered at a time when Moscow troops were experiencing difficulties at the front, had ended, after the recruitment of 300,000 troops.
The Russian army also launched a voluntary recruitment drive in the spring, reassuring those who feared being mobilized by force. In addition, “financial difficulties and family ties also push the exiles to return,” says Konstantin Kalachev.
Ivan Nesterov confirms this. In Kazakhstan, after the euphoria of the first few weeks, he gradually fell into depression, he admits. “I missed my homeland. My friends, the places I love. It was very hard psychologically. I no longer wanted to work. I realized that I earned four times less than here,” he explains.
At the beginning of April, he decided to return. “When I landed in Moscow I felt an enormous relief, despite all the consequences that may be in store for me.” And it is that the risk of another mobilization taking place is still there. No decree has officially ended the order in September 2022.
According to testimonies published on social networks, Russian military offices continue to send summonses to men of age to be mobilized, to “verify” their situation and update military records.
The authorities also created in April the possibility of sending mobilization minutes by email, while until then they could only be delivered by hand, which allowed many Russians to ignore the call.
Given this persistent threat, the expert Konstantin Kalachev believes that a large part of those who have returned to Russia “are willing to leave at any time” if “their financial capabilities allow it.”
Ivan also does not rule out leaving again. Rumors that they will recruit again next fall worry him. “I also see that new laws are being adopted, that the country is shutting down. As a friend said: ‘The homeland is important but it is better to be a living coward than a dead brave one.'”
The 30-year-old remembers the “first” he felt upon arriving in Kazakhstan: “a feeling of freedom.” “He could openly say whatever he thought, without running the risk of ending up in jail,” he says.
While he was away, his older sister, whom he considers “much braver” than him, was arrested by police in Russia “because she was wearing a yellow hat and a blue scarf,” the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Accused of “resisting the police”, she was forced to leave the country to avoid a repression affecting thousands of people who chose to publicly oppose the conflict.
