ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AP) — If the selection was loss of life or a bullet to the leg, Yevgeny would take the bullet. A adorned hero of Russia’s battle in Ukraine, Yevgeny instructed his good friend and fellow soldier to please intention rigorously and keep away from bone. The tourniquets had been prepared.
The ache that adopted was the worth Yevgeny paid for a brand new likelihood at life. Like hundreds of different Russian troopers, he abandoned the military.
“I joke that I gave start to myself,” he stated. “When a girl provides start to a baby, she experiences very intense ache and offers new life. I gave myself life after going via very intense ache.”
Yevgeny made it out of the trenches. However the brand new life he discovered just isn’t what he had hoped for.
The Related Press spoke with 5 officers and one soldier who abandoned the Russian navy. All have legal instances in opposition to them in Russia, the place they face 10 years or extra in jail. Every is ready for a welcome from the West that has by no means arrived. As a substitute, all however one dwell in hiding.
For Western nations grappling with Russia’s huge and rising diaspora, Russian troopers current specific concern: Are they spies? Conflict criminals? Or heroes?
Total asylum claims from Russian residents have surged for the reason that full-scale invasion, however few are profitable safety. Policymakers stay divided over whether or not to think about Russians in exile as potential property or dangers to nationwide safety.
Andrius Kubilius, a former prime minister of Lithuania now serving within the European Parliament, argues that cultivating Russians who oppose Vladimir Putin is within the strategic self-interest of the West. Fewer Russian troopers on the entrance, he added, means a weaker military.
“To not consider in Russian democracy is a mistake,” Kubilius stated. “To say that every one Russians are responsible is a mistake.”
All however one of many troopers spoke with AP on situation of anonymity, fearing deportation and persecution of themselves and their households. The AP reviewed authorized paperwork, together with legal case recordsdata, Russian public data and navy identification papers, in addition to pictures and movies to confirm their tales, but it surely was unattainable to independently corroborate each element.
Impartial Russian media outlet Mediazona has documented greater than 7,300 instances in Russian courts in opposition to AWOL troopers since September 2022; instances of desertion, the harshest cost, leapt sixfold final yr.
File numbers of individuals searching for to abandon – greater than 500 within the first two months of this yr – are contacting Idite Lesom, or “Get Misplaced,” a gaggle run by Russian activists within the Republic of Georgia. Final spring, simply 3% of requests for assist got here from troopers searching for to depart; in January, greater than a 3rd did, in line with the group’s head, Grigory Sverdlin. The numbers of identified deserters could also be small in comparison with Russia’s total troop energy, however they’re an indicator of morale.
“Clearly, Russian propaganda is making an attempt to promote us a narrative that every one Russia helps Putin and his battle,” Sverdlin stated. “However that’s not true.”
The query now could be, the place can they go?
German officers have stated that Russians fleeing navy service can search safety, and a French court docket final summer time dominated that Russians who refuse to battle can declare refugee standing. In follow, nonetheless, it’s confirmed troublesome for deserters, most of whom have passports that solely permit journey inside a handful of former Soviet states, to get asylum, legal professionals, activists and deserters say.
Fewer than 300 Russians bought refugee standing within the U.S. in fiscal yr 2022. Customs and Border Patrol officers encountered greater than 57,000 Russians at U.S. borders in fiscal yr 2023, up from round 13,000 in fiscal yr 2021.
In France, asylum requests rose greater than 50% between 2022 and 2023, to a complete of round 3,400 individuals, in line with the French workplace that handles the requests. And final yr, Germany bought 7,663 first-time asylum purposes from Russian residents, up from 2,851 in 2022, Germany’s Inside Ministry instructed AP in an e mail. Not one of the knowledge specifies what number of had been troopers.
As they depend the times till their authorized proper to remain in Kazakhstan ends, Yevgeny – and the others – have watched different deserters get seized by Russian forces in Armenia, deported from Kazakhstan and switch up lifeless, riddled with bullets, in Spain.
“There isn’t a mechanism for Russians who don’t need to battle, deserters, to get to a protected place,” Yevgeny stated. He urges Western policymakers to rethink. “In any case, it’s less expensive economically to permit an individual into your nation — a wholesome younger man who can work — than to produce Ukraine with weapons.”
YEVGENY
Sitting in his spartan room in Astana, Kazakhstan, Yevgeny rummaged via a cardboard field that holds the issues he thought to avoid wasting.
“It’s like a girl’s purse, there’s a lot stuff,” he muttered, poking round actual and faux passports, a letter with hearts on it, blister packs of tablets.
He can’t discover his navy medals. He has the certificates, although, commemorating his service in Syria and Ukraine.
Yevgeny appears out of the blue ashamed. “I don’t care about them,” he stated, shoving every thing again within the field.
The son of postal employees, Yevgeny went to navy college largely as a result of it was free. He did 41 parachute jumps, and discovered to trip horses, dive, shoot and deal with explosives. The price of his schooling would come after commencement: 5 years of obligatory navy service.
The evening of Feb. 23, 2022, Yevgeny and his unit barely slept. Their tanks, hulking and darkish, forged lengthy shadows on a skinny layer of snow beside the railroad tracks that will carry them towards Ukraine. Yevgeny was too drunk with fatigue to assume a lot about what would occur subsequent.
On Yevgeny’s second day at battle, an officer leaned in opposition to his machine gun and shot off his personal finger, he stated. Later, a man fell asleep below a navy car and died when it drove over him. Individuals bought misplaced and by no means got here again.
Within the chaos, round 10 males in his unit had been by chance killed with weapons or grenades. One soldier shot one other sq. within the chest. What had been they doing, Yevgeny questioned, testing their bulletproof vests? None of it made sense in a world the place life mattered. However Yevgeny wasn’t in that world anymore.
The deeper Yevgeny moved into Ukraine, the uglier issues bought.
“We didn’t need to kill anybody, however we additionally needed to dwell,” defined Yevgeny, a senior lieutenant who oversaw a platoon of round 15 males. “The locals would are available civilian automobiles and shoot at our navy. What would you do?”
He stated that Ukrainian prisoners of battle had been executed as a result of the Russians couldn’t get them again to Russia and didn’t need to construct detention facilities.
“Particular individuals had been chosen for this, as a result of lots of others refused,” he stated. “Individuals with a particular, so to talk, psyche had been appointed executioners.”
There are issues Yevgeny can’t overlook: A 14-year-old Ukrainian boy who gave the impression to be making Molotov cocktails and was executed. A 24-year-old Ukrainian girl caught with compromising data on her telephone raped by two Russian troopers.
Yevgeny was inside respiratory distance of Kyiv when Moscow ordered a retreat. In a single day in April 2022, round seventy individuals from his brigade died in an ambush, he stated. The Ukrainian navy launched a video of the encounter with the retreating column.
Pop, pop, pop go the fireballs. Little flags bob above the tanks, giving it the texture of a online game. Shells crash a bit off to the left. Then, a success. The video cuts to a magnified picture of a Russian tank pluming black smoke, two lifeless our bodies curled beside it.
“Very cool,” wrote somebody within the feedback.
“One of the best sight in my life is to see how the Russians die,” wrote one other.
Yevgeny was in that column. He is aware of males who’re dying in these balls of fireside. His face is flat. He doesn’t need to see it once more.
“Lots of my associates have died. And these had been actually good guys who didn’t need to battle,” he stated. “However there was no manner out for them.”
He’s crying.
If he may, Yevgeny would return to 2013, the yr he entered navy college. He would stand sentinel on the gates of his college and inform all of the boys go dwelling, keep away, this place just isn’t what it appears.
He needs them to know three phrases: “You’ll die.”
It took Yevgeny lower than three months at battle to resolve to get himself shot within the leg.
“You may solely depart wounded or lifeless,” Yevgeny defined. “Nobody needs to depart lifeless.”
He made a pact with three different troopers. They referred to as it their Plan B. Yevgeny would take the primary bullet, then the comms man, then the sniper. The machine gunner stated he didn’t need to depart Ukraine with out his brother, who was additionally preventing, however he’d stand by their story.
One chill Could morning, as they trudged via even columns of pine bushes on their option to retrieve a drone that had landed in Ukrainian territory, Yevgeny and his associates determined it was time for Plan B. They’d already misplaced one man in that space and now felt like they had been on a suicide mission.
When the sniper shot Yevgeny, the ache was like a robust man hammering a 9 mm metallic bar into his flesh. Then the comms man took a bullet to his thigh. After seeing the 2 of them crumple and scowl, the third man chickened out.
Blood stored gushing, regardless of the tourniquet, and Yevgeny was shocked to find he couldn’t stroll. His associates dragged him 300 meters again via the woods. He was given candy tea and evacuated that very same night.
Yevgeny spent months in rehabilitation and figured he may trip out his harm till his contract expired in June 2023. However after Putin’s announcement of partial mobilization in September 2022, it not mattered what his contract stated. Troopers like him had been now obliged to serve till the top of the battle.
He knew he needed to depart. He made it to Kazakhstan in early 2023, with the assistance of Idite Lesom. Russian authorities filed a legal case in opposition to him. His relations again in Russia had been questioned, his residence there searched.
Since then, Yevgeny has been doing his greatest to vanish. He discovered a spot in Astana in an residence that stank of cat. They had been 4 males with solely three cups, three spoons and three chairs to go round. They boiled water with an electrical coil in a glass jar as a result of nobody needed to splurge for a kettle.
He labored for just a few weeks skittering round Astana on an previous motorbike delivering meals. However his paychecks by no means arrived, probably as a result of his SIM card and checking account had been in several individuals’s names.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do when his financial savings run out. He stated he is utilized for asylum in France, Germany and the USA – clearly the very best place to cover from Russia, he stated. He’d like serve in a U.N. mission someplace, but it surely’s onerous for him to conceive a path from right here to there.
He wakes at ten o’clock, steps out of the bathe into one other molten, formless day. That evening, he’ll comb his hair and exit to a bar with different deserters, to go just a few glowing hours as a standard man.
On the bar, somebody remembered that it was the one-year anniversary of Russia’s September 2022 mobilization. Putin drafted 300,000 troops to battle in Ukraine. Tens of hundreds of them at the moment are lifeless.
The desk went quiet. Yevgeny looked for a phrase that meant the alternative of evil so they might drink to it.
Ultimately, they raised their glasses to advantage, then to peace.
FARHAD
Inside hours of Putin’s September 2022 mobilization decree, threatening messages began pinging in on Farhad Ziganshin’s telephone. A small man with an enormous voice, Farhad had deserted a profession in music for the navy to please his dad. He’d tried to resign from the armed forces, however the navy college the place he taught rejected his software, he stated.
Panicked, he piled into the household Chevrolet together with his mom, sister, canine and aunt and took off for the Kazakh border close to midnight. They’d attempt to make it appear to be a enjoyable household trip. The roads had been jammed with different Russians fleeing Putin’s draft.
“Hurrah!” shouted Farhad, pumping his fists within the air, as they left Russia.
Farhad landed a job at a burger joint close to the border, then adopted a good friend of a good friend to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest metropolis, the place he’d been promised work as a singer. He ended up working in a banquet corridor, sleeping on an enormous, golden mattress in a newlywed suite and consuming as a lot leftover meals as he needed.
Life was good, however unsure. Kazakhstan was taking part in a fragile recreation, making an attempt to assuage Russia with out distancing allies in Europe. In December 2022, Kazakhstan deported a Russian intelligence officer, Mikhail Zhilin, who had abandoned. In March 2023, a Russian court docket sentenced Zhilin to 6 and a half years in jail.
That very same month, Farhad determined to maneuver to Armenia, considering it was most likely safer. However he was blocked from boarding his flight. “Are you on the needed record?” a border agent requested as he flicked via Farhad’s passport. Farhad went pale. Chilly sweat prickled over his physique.
He was led to a room for questioning. A person in civilian garments sat throughout from him.
“You might be my Muslim brother,” he instructed Farhad. “I’m additionally in opposition to the battle. Inform me every thing.”
Farhad confessed.
Farhad tried to brace himself for what was to return. He slipped his toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, slippers, snacks and a ebook – Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” — right into a clear bag. His cell on the detention heart had a metallic door with a small window and slot for meals, a safety digicam and a gap within the flooring for a bathroom.
Farhad stared on the ceiling all evening, his panic mounting: How am I going to dwell right here? Will I be crushed or raped? I’d kill myself first.
The morning of his third day in detention, three enormous luggage arrived for Farhad, full of meals, garments and cigarettes from native human rights activists. “I lay down and thought that’s the top,” Farhad stated. “Kaput.” Why would he want all these items if he weren’t in for a protracted incarceration?
Two hours later, a police officer appeared. “Take your issues and get out,” he ordered.
Farhad was free.
Farhad’s lawyer instructed AP he was launched as a result of below the Kazakh legal code, in addition to multilateral agreements with Russia, suspects accused of navy crimes can’t be extradited. Farhad was protected, not less than for the second.
“We don’t know what tomorrow will convey,” stated his lawyer, Artur Alkhastov, who works with the Kazakhstan Worldwide Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Legislation in Astana. “In Kazakhstan, politics is larger than the regulation. . . Every part can change.”
In July, unbiased Russia media reported that France had rejected Farhad’s software for asylum. What really occurred was that Farhad’s software for a journey allow to France to use for asylum had been denied, Alkhastov stated.
With out a global passport, Farhad was caught in Kazakhstan. Furthermore, the publicity raised fears that Russian authorities would take recent curiosity in his case. Farhad moved from Almaty to Astana, the capital, to decrease his profile.
“It’s not protected to remain in Kazakhstan,” he stated. “I simply attempt to lead a standard life, with out violating the legal guidelines of Kazakhstan, with out being too seen, with out showing wherever. We have now a proverb: Be quieter than water and decrease than grass.”
He alters his SIM card each few months, doesn’t dwell at his registered deal with and avoids employers who ask too many questions. After six weeks, he ran out of cash and moved in with one other Russian deserter, Yevgeny. His mattress was a pile of coats and sweaters on the ground. It was unattainable to sleep. His again was killing him.
He considered the life he’d left behind in Russia. “In Kazan, I had a very completely different life. I had my very own residence, I had a job there, I earned cash, I had employees below my command,” he stated. “Right here I’m residing sleeping on coats, consuming I don’t know what. And with none cash in my pocket. It’s very miserable,” On-line, individuals name him a coward and traitor and say he ought to be killed.
Farhad bought a job at an actual property startup that didn’t ask for paperwork. Each morning, he sang Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” to his co-workers.
After work, Farhad preferred to stroll round Astana, singing deep gradual songs to himself to fill the darkening hours. He dreamed of beginning a household however couldn’t afford to take a girl out to the flicks. “I can’t fall in love with somebody and have somebody fall in love with me,” he stated. “So I simply stroll round and sing songs.”
However he needed to consider that he had made a worthy alternative.
“I noticed that I did not need to serve in this type of Russian military that destroys cities, kills civilians, and forcibly appropriates international land and territory,” he stated. “If maybe watching, listening to my story may convey even one individual to cause, I might have made a sure contribution.”
Six months later, the actual property enterprise has collapsed and Farhad is making an attempt to promote flooring as an alternative. He moved into an residence of his personal, however retains lacking lease funds. He’s been warned that his authorized proper to remain in Kazakhstan is coming to an finish. He doesn’t know what to do subsequent.
SPARROW
Sparrow knew from the beginning that cash may imply the distinction between life and loss of life. The month earlier than he was born, his father was killed in a playing dispute over cash. His mom raised him, alongside together with his brother and sister, alone, working as a cook dinner in an orphanage in a tiny village.
Later, he moved farther north, to work in a diamond-mining city not removed from the Arctic Circle.
The corporate Sparrow labored for owned greater than diamonds. They successfully owned the city, sponsoring its theater, colleges, hospital, sports activities complicated and residence blocks. Because it turned out, in addition they owned Sparrow.
Sparrow completed his shift the afternoon of Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, and was cleansing his Bobcat when his boss got here by and instructed him to report instantly to human assets. They took his passport and navy ID and locked them in a protected.
“They stated, ‘You are fired,’” Sparrow recalled. “You might have one hour to get to the navy recruitment level. For those who don’t, you’ll have a legal case in opposition to you.”
Sparrow obeyed. At 6 a.m. the subsequent morning, he and a whole bunch of different conscripts boarded a heavy previous airplane sure for a navy base within the regional capital.
The considered battle didn’t cross Sparrow’s thoughts. All he may take into consideration was his job. Sparrow is delicately composed, with a pale, Asian face, ink-dark eyes and bone-china cheeks. Unable to complete college, he labored onerous at laying street. Winters, he endured temperatures so excessive they might crack a backhoe. Why had they fired him?
When he arrived, the navy base was chaos. Some 6,000 individuals had been crammed into the barracks, he calculated, and nobody was giving orders. Males spilled over one another, hiving off into small teams to drink. He couldn’t discover a free mattress, so he dropped his bag in a nook and curled up on the ground.
The following day, he discovered his option to an data stand to determine who was in cost. However as an alternative of an inventory of personnel, he discovered pictures of lifeless individuals and an exhortation to kill Ukrainian troopers. “I noticed this picture – what’s all this?” he thought. “I’m not going wherever to kill individuals – by no means!”
Sparrow pulled his commander apart to attempt to discover a option to keep away from going the place he was being despatched. He would serve another way. He may pay.
The commander was not desirous about bribes and instructed him that if he didn’t battle with the Russian armed forces, he’d find yourself with a non-public navy firm, like Yevgeny Prigozhin’s then-powerful Wagner Group. “You continue to have only one path,” his commander instructed him. “Write a refusal, you’ll go to jail, and we all know the place you’ll find yourself, at PMC Wagner.”
He was 30 years previous. He referred to as his mom for assist.
Sparrow’s guts couldn’t take it. He ran to the toilet. He paced in anxious circles. Then ran to the toilet once more. And once more.
“What’s fallacious with you?” his commander demanded.
“I simply have some abdomen issues,” Sparrow stated.
Whereas the commander was at lunch, Sparrow grabbed his ID, phone and civilian garments and headed for a gap within the wall. His mom was ready on the opposite aspect.
The following morning, they boarded the primary flight out of city. Forty hours later, Sparrow was in Kazakhstan.
Astana felt recent and heat. He realized he’d been chilly his complete life.
“I’m free,” he instructed himself.
Freedom for Sparrow really meant an even bigger cage.
Two weeks after he fled, Russian authorities opened a legal case in opposition to him. Russian media reported on his case, and Sparrow felt the publicity solely elevated the scale of the goal on his again. The fees in opposition to him had been quickly upgraded below a troublesome new clause in Russia’s legal code. Now he faces as much as 15 years in jail if he will get despatched again to Russia.
Safety brokers interrogated his mom again in Russia. Earlier than he ditched his Russian SIM, he used to get calls from Russian police who stated they knew the place he was. In October, a person claiming to be a Kazakh policeman began calling him to arrange a gathering. He stated he’d await a summons. None ever got here.
Sparrow is afraid of the background checks that include everlasting employment. As a substitute, he picks up occasional jobs gathering trash or hauling tools at building websites.
He was going to mattress at 4 a.m. and waking at midday. He couldn’t even get again to Russia to bury his grandfather.
Sparrow’s eyes went purple with tears.
“I don’t need something in life. I’ve no real interest in my very own affairs,” he stated. “Generally I don’t perceive myself. I simply sit all day on the Web, on YouTube, and skim information, information, information of what’s happening in Ukraine, and that’s it.”
He doesn’t know the standing of his personal asylum purposes. With out a international passport, how may he depart Kazakhstan anyway? Each time he dared to consider one thing good may occur to him, it hasn’t. Why attempt?
Outdoors his naked residence, he may hear the cries of youngsters who are usually not his, the thwack of a ball from a recreation he’s not taking part in, the voices of males talking to associates he doesn’t have.
“There are moments I remorse, however I did the fitting factor,” he stated. “I’d quite sit right here and endure and search for one thing than go there and kill a human being due to some unclear battle, which is 100% Russia’s fault. I don’t remorse it.”
SPORTSMASTER
As a baby, the boy was not notably good in school, however he may run. His mom was elevating him alone in a village in Western Russia hemmed in by busted coal mines, a spot as brief on hope because it was on jobs. She referred to as a good friend to get her son a spot at a navy college. The household wouldn’t need to pay a cent. It seemed like a ticket to a greater life.
On the navy academy, the boy studied engineering to grow to be a radio technician. However his actual ardour was sports activities. He needed to run sooner than anybody else.
Now identified by the nickname Sportsmaster, he in the end commanded 30 males, however stated he by no means went into fight. He stayed in service even after he’d fulfilled his five-year contract: He didn’t need to be a burden on his mom and who else was going to pay him to run?
The evening Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sportsmaster jolted awake for no cause at 3 a.m. and spent three sickening hours glued to the tv in disbelief. By daybreak, all hope had drained from his physique. He knew he can be ordered to battle.
“At that second, I instantly determined that I might not assist it in any manner, not even elevate my little finger to assist what had begun,” he stated. “I understood that this was a degree of no return that will change the lives of all the nation, together with mine.”
Sportsmaster stated he stopped exhibiting up at his base. In October 2022, his paychecks stopped coming.
His coach, the pinnacle of navy sports activities coaching, instructed him to report back to the bottom, they’d discover one thing simple for him to do and he’d receives a commission once more. It was a tempting provide from a trusted mentor.
His commanders had been ready for him beneath an enormous portrait of a legendary Russian navy hero. As he entered the room, they started to talk. It took a second for the phrases to grow to be clear: Particular Navy Operation. Order. Luhansk.
He realized they had been studying out his fight orders. He’d been tricked. They instructed him to signal.
He refused to the touch the pen.
The brigade’s chief of employees picked up a ebook with a Russian flag on the quilt, a replica of Russia’s Felony Code. “You both go to jail otherwise you go there,” he stated. “You might have solely two choices.”
Seized by panic, Sportsmaster turned to depart. He needed to get out of the constructing earlier than they locked him inside. His division’s chief of employees grabbed him by the shoulder, however he slipped away and did what he did greatest: run.
He pounded down three flights of stairs, taking six activates a zig-zagging staircase, blew previous the guards on the door and beelined for a stretch of fence removed from any checkpoint. He grabbed onto the black metallic bars of the fence and heaved himself over, clearing the speared suggestions, 2.5 meters tall, with no scratch.
“What I felt was solely disgust,” he stated.
Idite Lesom gave him step-by-step directions for easy methods to slip out of Russia. AP is withholding particulars of the route.
Earlier than he left, he recorded a video, a political message for the keepers of no matter nation he may find yourself in, a plea to persuade them of his friendship.
“They needed to pressure me to go battle in opposition to the free individuals of Ukraine,” he stated to the digicam. “Our freedom is taken away from us day-after-day, however Putin needed to steal it from them in three days.”
And he did what he may to make a grand gesture.
“Putin needed me to be in a bag,” he stated. “Nevertheless it’s his uniform that might be in a bag.”
He shoved his navy uniforms in two black trash luggage and threw them in a dumpster.
Close to midnight that very same day, his mom stood in a pool of streetlight in an empty car parking zone, weeping. As her son filmed her from the bus taking him away, she pressured a strained, sorrowful smile.
The bus carried Sportsmaster and his girlfriend again to the city the place he discovered to be a soldier.
“I all the time thought I used to be being skilled to guard my nation and defend it, but it surely turned out that I used to be being taught to assault and conquer,” he stated.
By that afternoon, they had been out of Russia and beaming. He was optimistic. As a minimum, he wouldn’t have to point out as much as his court docket listening to in Russia, the place he confronted legal fees for not taking part within the battle.
“The worst factor that would have occurred has occurred,” he stated. “Now solely good issues are coming.”
Sportsmaster and his girlfriend discovered a studio residence in one of many teeming, nameless buildings slapped up on the edges of Astana.
Six months later, like the opposite deserters, he’s hiding in plain sight. No SIM card of his personal. No clear path to citizenship or asylum. The gnawing peril of a knock on the door.
“There are Russian brokers right here who attempt to push Kazakhstan below Russia’s wing,” he stated. “I can’t say it’s as protected right here as I would love as a result of the place the wind blows, Kazakhstan will flip.”
He doesn’t have a global passport and if he tried to cross the border, he’d seemingly be arrested due to the legal case in opposition to him in Russia.
Whereas he waits for the wind to show in his favor, Sportsmaster has discovered work as a coach in Astana. Enterprise is booming.
“I educate individuals to run with pleasure,” he stated, bursting into an incandescent smile. “I’m for individuals to not get caught.”
On his every day runs, Sportsmaster eats via 10 kilometers in 40 minutes with animal grace. His breath is even, his heartbeat gradual, comfortable — if just for a second — together with his place on the earth.
He needs individuals to know that there are Russians with dignity.
“One thing new is beginning,” he stated. “I can’t let anybody resolve my future for me.”
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AP journalists Geir Moulson in Berlin, Lori Hinnant in Paris and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.
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In a joint manufacturing, The Related Press and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting broadcast the story of an underground community of Russian anti-war activists serving to troopers abandon Vladimir Putin’s battle in Ukraine.
