MOSCOW (Washington Insider Magazine)-Vladimir Putin stunned the nation by announcing the first mobilisation since the Second World War, instructing the men who received the draft to report to the local recruiting office to fight in Ukraine.
Men of military age are rushing out of the country in response to the Kremlin’s announcement of a partial mobilisation, which will probably cause a new, maybe unparalleled brain drain in the coming days and weeks.
Over a dozen men and women who moved out of Russia after Putin’s announcement of the so-called partial mobilisation or who plan to do so in the coming days were interviewed by The Guardian.
They claim there are few options for escape. Four of the five EU nations that border Russia made the announcement earlier this week that they would no longer grant Russians entry on tourist visas.
The cheapest one-way flight to Dubai from Moscow costs nearly 370,000 rubles (£5,000), which is a price too high for most. Direct flights from Moscow to Istanbul, Yerevan, Tashkent, and Baku, the capitals of nations permitting Russians to enter without a visa, were all sold out for the next week.
A “exceptional number” of Russian citizens have been attempting to cross the border overnight, reported the guards at the Finnish border, the last EU nation to still permit entry to Russians with tourist visas. Eyewitnesses have reported that the Russian-Georgian and Russian-Mongolian borders are “collapsing” under the weight of the heavy traffic.
Ira Lobanovskaya, the founder of the nongovernmental organisation, “Guide to the free World” which assists Russians who oppose the war in leaving the country, said that they were seeing an even bigger exodus than when the war had started.
Since Putin’s speech on Wednesday, she claimed that more than 1.5 million people had visited her website. Over 70,000 Russians who utilised the group’s services, in Lobanovkaya’s estimation, have already departed or have made firm arrangements to do so.
Those were individuals purchasing one-way tickets. As long as mobilisation was happening, they wouldn’t be coming back, she said.
Many people who are still in Russia will believe that there is not much time left. At least three areas have already made the decision to bar individuals who are eligible for the draft from entering their territories.
At Russian airports, border agents have apparently begun questioning the men departing about their military duty status and checking their return tickets.
Anitta Hipper, the home affairs spokesperson for the EU Commission, announced that the bloc would meet to consider the granting of humanitarian visas to Russians running away from mobilisation. However, the three Baltic states declared on Thursday that they are not willing to compel Russians who are attempting to avoid the draft to apply for asylum.
Even the men Putin promised not to call up, who have no military experience, are packing their suitcases.
They draw attention to the murky language in Putin’s mobilisation law as well as his history of failed promises.
Fears rose after Novaya Gazeta Europe, an independent website, reported that the mobilisation regulations allowed the Ministry of Defence to call up 1,000,000 individuals rather than the 300,000 that the nation’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, had declared on Wednesday.