Although Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin has announced the end of the mobilization, many Russian men are still hiding for fear of being drafted into military service. One of them has been living in a tent in the forest for two months.
Even though Vladimir Putin has announced the completion of the mobilization of 300,000 troops, many Russian men of military age continue to hide. The fear of being picked up by military recruits is apparently still great.
After the mobilization was announced in September, hundreds of thousands of men are said to have left Russia. But it is unclear exactly how many are hiding within their own country. Now the “Washington Post” is reporting on a young IT employee from southern Russia who has been hiding in a tent in the forest to avoid being sent to war – for two months.
After Putin issued the mobilization at the end of September, the IT employee, who wished to remain anonymous, was also desperately looking for escape routes. But since he couldn’t afford a flight from Russia, he drove to the woods to evade military service, the Washington Post reports. further
“I was afraid that if I went into a store, I would be drafted or that someone would come to my house,” he told the newspaper. The young man and his wife have always been avid campers and have been living that way ever since two months in hiding.
Also included: a sleeping bag, a saw, a gas burner, solar panels and a satellite dish to continue working online. The IT employee works every day in a separate tent, which is higher up in a clearing in order to receive reasonably stable internet.
Even if his living conditions have obviously changed a lot, they are still much better than those of the mobilized men who are being sent to Ukraine, the Russian told the Washington Post. The fact that hundreds of Russia’s new conscripts have already been killed has strengthened his decision.
Above all, the lack of equipment and the lack of training would cause problems for the soldiers at the front, according to the IT expert: “Either I will be mobilized and put in a kind of prison where you have no rights, just duties, or I will stay here where I still have many problems and questions, but I am free.”
The Washington Post interviewed five other Russian men who have been hiding in apartments, country houses or music studios in recent weeks. According to the report, they still do not feel safe from Putin’s war machine.
All of them are pursuing one goal: They want to avoid killing or dying themselves in a senseless fight in Ukraine.
A 38-year-old lab technician tells The Washington Post that he was ambushed by a group of recruiters with a subpoena in late September – but he didn’t sign it and chose not to show up at the rally point the next day. Since then, the 38-year-old has been hiding in a country house outside of Moscow – but the laboratory technician still has to go to work.
In order not to be recognized by the traffic police, he rides his bike all the way into town, always wearing a mask. After all, the facial recognition system of the Moscow surveillance network could otherwise identify him, he says.
The laboratory technician definitely does not want to go to the front: He explains to the Washington Post that he cannot clearly choose sides in this war.
The newspaper from the US capital also interviewed a 24-year-old financial adviser from Moscow, who is a prime target for recruiting officers because of his previous service as a special operations soldier. The 24-year-old says they went to great lengths to locate him.
His apartment was taped up with draft notices and notices were also sent to his office. Until a few days before the end of the mobilization, military recruiters with a police escort went to the 24-year-old’s apartment and asked the tenants about the whereabouts of the ex-soldier, according to the Washington Post.
Finally, the young man hid in a house in the country, and then moved to several apartments of friends in the Moscow region. He always kept a low profile: “I refused under all circumstances to go to the office and I was not seen in public places,” he reported to the newspaper. Because the ex-soldier doesn’t want to go to war: “I don’t think this is my war at all and there’s nothing for me to do there,” said the 24-year-old.
Putin wants to tighten control of the flow of funds to equip the army. Trenches in Crimea can be seen on satellite images. According to a US general, more than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured in Ukraine so far. All current voices and developments on the Ukraine war can be found in the ticker.
After the recapture of Cherson, the question for military expert Mike Martin is not what Russia is going to do now – it is Ukraine’s turn for him. On Twitter he shows how the war could continue. His guess: Ukraine is targeting the “gravitational center of Putin’s credibility.”
