Russian officer Farkhad Ziganshin had prepared himself for a life of military service since a young age. He could never have imagined that one day he would become a deserter and flee the country.“I don’t support what’s happening in Ukraine, I don’t support the government we’ve had for so many years,” Ziganshin, 24, told AFP in Kazakhstan, where he fled in September 2022 after Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s first military mobilisation since World War II.
Anti-war activists urge European and US policymakers to do more to help men like Ziganshin, who are hunted at home and viewed with suspicion in the West.He is not giving up, however. He openly speaks of his opposition to Putin and the war in Ukraine with foreign journalists. He describes the Russian armed forces as a “great school of life”. But when Russia invaded Ukraine, he realised this was not the army he wanted to dedicate his life to.
Mikhail Zhilin of the Russian Federal Guard Service fled to Kazakhstan to avoid the draft, illegally crossing the border. He was sent back to Russia and last year sentenced to six and a half years in prison. He said he had “forged his story” and passed himself off as a civilian in his home town of Orenburg in order to obtain a passport, which enabled him to travel to Georgia with his wife and child.“I used to see mothers crying in front of officers who didn’t answer them even though they knew their children were dead,” Yuseinov said.
According to the CNDA, 102 Russians fleeing mobilisation have already been granted refugee status in France. There are no army deserters among them. Artem Klyga, a lawyer working with the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, has been lobbying the French and German governments to help Russians fleeing the battlefield.
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