The Daily - One Man Flees Putin’s Draft

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Kirill, 24, works at a nonprofit for homeless people in the Moscow region. He does not support the policies of President Vladimir V. Putin and is vehemently against the invasion of Ukraine.After suffering setbacks in the war, Mr. Putin announced a military draft a week ago. Kirill was among those called up. As he hides out to avoid being served his papers, Kirill spoke to Sabrina Tavernise about how his life has changed.Guest: Kirill, a 24-year-old from Moscow who is attempting to avoid the draft and who asked that only his first name be used to avoid reprisals.Background reading: In a rare admission of official mistakes, the Kremlin has acknowledged that the military draft has been rife with problems.Resistance to the draft has grown as villagers, activists and even some elected officials ask why the conscription drive appears to be hitting minority groups and rural areas harder than the big cities.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. Hello, Anton Trajnovsky, correspondent for The New York Times. Yes, I'm listening. Last weekend, my colleague Anton Trajnovsky called a woman who lives in a small town above the Arctic Circle in northern Russia. Yes, thank you for calling. There is an opportunity. town above the Arctic Circle in northern Russia.

She told him she was in line at the pediatrician with sick kids when she first heard the news. The woman next to her got a phone call. Someone's son had just been drafted to go fight the war in Ukraine. When she overheard that, she said, I felt like ice inside. Like some kind of darkness had fallen.

Like some kind of darkness had fallen. Then she started hearing about other men. Her husband's business got a letter. Seven employees had to respond to the draft office. The band director at a local school got the call. Then the draft came for her extended family. They're taking my second cousin. They're taking my first cousin. They're taking my nephew. She's worried that with winter coming, there won't be enough men to run the coal plant that heats people's homes or take care of the reindeer that her community depends on. She said she doesn't understand the logic of taking so many people from a place where there are so few.

The draft that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a week ago is disrupting lives all over Russia. Russians describe getting draft notices while they're at home and at work. Notices are even being forced into the hands of those arrested for protesting the war. Today, I talk to one man facing conscription about how his life has changed since the day the war came to Russia. It's Thursday, September 29th. Okay. Tell me your name, your, just your first name, because I know the sensitivities, your age, and where you live. My name is Kirill. I'm 24, and I live in Moscow Oblast.

So Kirill, going back to the beginning of the war, when Putin first ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, take me back to that moment in your life. What did you think when you saw that? moment in your life. What did you think when you saw that? On the 24th, I woke up not very early, kind of like usual, around 11 o'clock in the morning. My friend in the morning said that war had begun. If I'm being honest with you, I don't actually remember that day very much because I didn't fully understand and comprehend the magnitude of what had happened and how horrible it would all be.

I remember that I went home that day and began talking to my parents. I remember that I went home that day and began talking to my parents. I didn't really want to talk about it with my parents because I don't talk about political topics with them. We have very different points of view and I like to avoid those things with them. The year before, I had going to that protest, they saw me as someone who was against the policies of Putin. And that was true. Kirill, did they support Putin? What were their views about him? They didn't support Putin, but in principle...

So my parents didn't openly support Putin, but did believe what he was saying about the war. believe what he was saying about the war. My parents aren't exactly part of that really toxic part of the public that's really, really for this war, that, you know, puts Z stickers on the back of their car. They're not those people. It's hard for me to quite describe to you, but I will say that they are people who try very hard

not to notice the lawlessness that is going on around them. And I came to them and said, the war is a catastrophe. to them and said, the war is a catastrophe. There's no reason in the world that one country should attack another country. It just seemed so clear to me. And they said, what do you mean by war? Are you saying that they're lying to us and you're the one who knows the truth?

No. Did you argue? Yes, we argued very badly. I love my parents. That's clear. We each set our position and never returned to the topic because we understood we just had different points of view. So the time started going by, yes,

and I basically turned into a person that was just constantly updating the news on my phone. The strange thing was there was a war. I could see it happening. But in the first three months, I didn't really feel it at all. Nothing around me changed. The first thing I noticed was that the prices really started going up

in the stores. I didn't have a very big salary and I felt it a lot. The price of fruits, the price of vegetables were going up very sharply. I was seeing that some of the factories were closing and a lot of the Western firms were leaving Russia. I was working in a company that was doing this cargo loading and a lot of it was parts for airplanes. There were firings.

A big portion of our colleagues were transferred to a quote-unquote leave without pay. They were continued to be held on the books, but there was no money. And really, they were just all sitting at home without a job. I worked for another two and a half months. I had started volunteering at a nonprofit that helped homeless people. And I heard that they actually had an opening for a paid position. I applied for the position and got it, and it was slightly better paid, and it's the thing that's given me strength in these months. But if you talk about the quality of life, it didn't really change that much.

I was in horror looking at this, but... There was really nothing radical at all. Nothing much changed. And that is what was most disturbing for me, the contrast. A number of years ago, a very famous rock musician said this about the Chechen War. was being at the war and seeing the mud and the death and getting on an airplane and flying back and landing in Moscow and seeing

people walking around on the streets and children playing on jungle gyms and people shopping. The most frightening thing is for people to have their lives keep going on and not feel the pain that is being caused in this other place. It really just didn't concern our lives. Were you ever worried that the war would come to you? In the most direct sense, no.

If it was going to affect us, the war, it would really only be kind of tangentially, sort of on the sidelines, you know, that the prices had risen and my father was having problems at work because of the war. What were the problems your father was having because of the war? My father repairs and sells imported equipment for the milking of cows. And the sanctions really hit that. It was a firm that worked in Russia, and it left. How did that affect your father's point of view about the war? Not at all.

He kept repeating that it was much worse in the 1990s, so we'll be fine, we'll survive. What did you think of that? I was really sad. Because I just didn't understand that logic. I wanted to live in a better way and not constantly be comparing ourselves to a worse way. — — Where were you the moment that you heard about this so-called partial mobilization. It was two days ago.

I woke up 15 minutes before my alarm clock and I saw the news. I saw the news in the face of the president. of the president. I saw the banner headline with little lightning bolts next to it that was telling me this was important, that he was announcing a partial mobilization. And I understood that given my health, my age, and my former military service, that I fit the criteria 100%. How did you feel in that moment?

How did you feel in that moment? I guess I just felt this sense of resignation, kind of futility. Like, I was just going to go to work, but I was going to be called up in this draft and go to war. What was the feeling in your heart? None. I felt this emptiness. Not anger, kind of almost nothing. I just thought, what do I do next? Because I realized at that moment that the war had finally come to me. We'll be right back.

Kirill, you talked about your military service. How long did you serve in the military? I was there for a year. I tried to maximally escape any mandatory military service. I didn't get into a university, I got into a technical school. When I graduated from my technical school, I was drafted and I didn't have money to buy my way out of it. The only people who really go to the army about the Russian soldiers who were captured in Ukraine, the Russian prisoners of war.

And I tell you, eight out of 10 of them say that they just went because it was the path of least resistance. They didn't have the money to buy their way out and they didn't want to go to prison for 10 years. So they chose this. It's not a choice to go off to defend the fatherland. It's about poverty and the desire to feed their families. So going back to when Putin first announced the mobilization, what did you start to do?

What was the first thing? First, I started researching where I could go to get out. Where I could go to get out that wouldn't require a visa and wouldn't require a lot of money, because I don't have a lot of money. Physically, I started to feel bad. I had a really bad headache. I was very afraid. I'm not going to hide it from you. I was terrified. Then I just sat down,

breathed in, caught my breath, and I went to work. I got there and there were several other young men who were in the same category as me. We sat there, and we were drinking coffee together and kind of laughing and just talking about it, and it felt better. We were talking about what was the information out there, who was going to try to leave,

what we were going to try to do. What were they saying? We were just trying to find the logic in a very illogical decision. As the hours went by and I was texting with my friends and watching the news, it became very clear how many lies had been told. They said they wouldn't draft students and we saw many students being called up. They said they wouldn't draft people who were in their 50s and 60s and we saw many people in their 50s and 60s being called up. So it became clear that this was something that was really going to affect everybody.

Then I began to feel really in danger that they're going to come for me right now. And I saw when the news had been announced about a partial mobilization all of these people going out to protest. I wanted to go out to the protest. And it's clear that in Russia, of course, the protests don't influence or affect anything.

But it was really the only true and honest thing I could have done at that moment. But I stayed home because I was very afraid that if they got me, if the police got me, that would lead to my drafting. How do you feel about that? I feel regret that I didn't go. I think it was wrong that I didn't go. I don't know. Why do you think it was wrong not to go to the protest? Because I understood that I was just hiding behind the backs of other people.

It was as if I had just kind of abandoned the mission, as if I was saying, okay, young women, young men, you people not of drafting age, you go out and say your piece and say it on my behalf. These people will be receiving bruises and wounds. But I think, in retrospect, to sit at home and do nothing is actually harder than that. I feel like I'm dramatizing this. I don't want to be dramatizing this.

Yes, yes, yes, Kirill. No, no. yes, Kirill. I don't want you to be thinking that I'm in some sort of terrible situation. It's just a lot of people are in this situation now. I'm warm, I feel good, I'm under a roof. The thing that I'm feeling right now has nothing, nothing in comparison to the thing that people are feeling who are in the war. I don't want to have any comparison drawn there. So, two days after Putin's announcement, my father got a call. A friend of his in the police station gave him a call. And he said, there's a draft notice for your son tomorrow, for the next day. And that he was going to bring it over.

I had this feeling of helplessness. I didn't know what to do. And I've been at work for the past couple of days. You live at work now? Yes, I'm been at work for the past couple of days. You live at work now? Yes, I'm living at work. You're sleeping there? You're brushing your teeth there? You're taking a shower there? Yeah, actually, all of the above. And it's actually not that hard because I'm working in an organization that is for homeless people.

So there's lots of creature comforts and things that we have for people around. I'm hiding here because I don't want to be in a place where people recognize me and people could come and give me this draft notice. The way that it has been working is that people are being given these things on the streets, at protests, when they come out of the metro, and this is something that I'm trying to avoid. So I've been here at work, and I don't think they will find me or get me if I don't go out. There were a few people in my company that met the criteria for the draft.

We put a few plans together, which we're now trying to carry out. Our co-workers are trying to gather all of our documents and figure out from embassies and from different places where potentially we could go and get a visa to get out. I'm hugely grateful to them, but I understand that that variant is really unlikely, that it's basically not going to happen. So if that doesn't happen, and I don't think it will, then the second thing we're thinking of is to get to the border with Kazakhstan.

And we're hoping that the border doesn't close. When would you go to Kazakhstan? So I'll probably be in this workspace that I've been in for the past couple of days until the 28th of September. But if I get a visa, there's still a danger because they're looking for people in the airports and they could be looking at my passport in the airport. So airports are not a safe place. In the train stations, they're checking people even less. And the least of all, the checking is by car. Do you plan to go by car?

Probably, yes. How far is it to the Kazakh border? Right now, I'm looking, I'm looking. It's about a 20-hour drive. That's very far. But again, there's a complication. I don't have a car. So this would mean maybe finding a group that was going

or asking someone to drive me to the border. So far, I don't have any options for me, but there are some options here. My father. My father has a car, maybe with him. Kirill, would you ask your father? Would you ask your father to drive you to the border? I asked them to come see me on the weekend.

It's probably going to be on Sunday. And I'm going to personally ask if they would be amenable to that option. They're having a hard time understanding the risks. They see only what is told on television, which is that young people won't be sent to the war. They'll first get some training. So it's hard for me to explain that I risk prison time and that I'm not going to go to this draft. What will you say to them? I'll tell them that I don't want to die purely for the reason of one person who's doing this completely senseless thing.

I'll just explain in a very practical way, and I hope that we can find a common language. I think for them, I'm more valuable than some type of abstract idea about the war or victory. They love you. Yes. Yes. What do you think that they'll say back to you? They'll probably be translating all of the things that they're hearing on television, that this won't really concern you, it won't reach you, it'll be okay. Maybe we should just go out to the country for a while. I'll just be coming from how I see the situation, and I'll ask them for help.

And if they refuse, then I'm going to find a way to get to the border. Kirill, if your parents do refuse or simply say back what they're seeing on television, is that painful to you? That you might not be able to find a common language, even when it's about your own life? No, it's not painful. If I had also been steeped in the propaganda for so many years, that we have external enemies, that we need to be vigilant, I think I would probably have the same view.

If you don't make it to Kazakhstan, what will happen? Well, it depends on if they stop me. If that happens, then I'm going to have to hide somewhere inside the borders of Russia. Kirill, when you think about going to war on behalf of Russia, wearing a Russian uniform in Ukraine, when you think about having to do that, how does that make you feel? That's the most terrifying thought of all?

I've already decided that it's better to go to jail than to go off to that absolutely insane and senseless war. Why is it such a terrifying thought for you, being in Ukraine in a Russian uniform? It's not even about the fear of being killed, but of killing someone. It's horror. Я просто немножко не так много спал и немножко не очень хорошо сейчас думается. Пожалуйста, направь еще раз. Еще поговорили. Прямо к резюм-планированию. Это 2-3 недели. I had these plans. I had plans for a vacation.

I had plans to read. I had plans for the next couple of weeks. And now I'm just constantly obsessively watching the news and trying to figure out how toively watching the news and trying to figure out how to get to the Kazakh border. Strange that I had these plans. It's a very strange feeling, kind of a funny feeling almost for me now because I feel at home here and I feel happy here in this job. I myself am not very outgoing

and they've really made friends with me and I want to stay. I can't really describe it. I can just concentrate on the one thing I know that I have to leave this place and that I have to leave the closest people to me in my life. But it feels like it's just going to be a long weekend, that I'm going to go away and that I'm going to come back

and I'll be right back here at the homeless shelter talking with the residents. я ничего от этого не понимаю. Two days after our conversation, Kirill texts me. He says he's heard the borders might be closing soon, and he needs to leave now. So he packs a small bag, his flashlight, his headphones, his favorite T-shirts.

He buys some Snickers and some bottles of water for the road. His father can't drive him, so Kirill decides to take the bus with a friend. They ride through the night. When they reach the border with Kazakhstan,

they find a line of cars waiting to cross that stretches for 10 kilometers. So Kirill and his friend find a checkpoint where they can cross on foot. He texts me a picture of the crowd. Thousands of people are waiting. Many of them are young men in sweatshirts, their hoods drawn against the cold. He records a video of a border guard taunting the crowd,

insulting them for trying to leave Russia. And then he stops texting. For almost 20 hours, I don't hear anything. Then, on Wednesday night, I get a message. Sabrina, hello. Everything is good. I crossed the border. A few of the guys who were with me were not allowed to leave

I so far don't have a local phone almost no internet and for now I'm answering only my loved ones and my friends Since Putin announced the draft a week ago, an estimated 200,000 Russians have fled the country. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. I am in Key West, Florida.

I am at the intersection of Eisenhower Drive and Truman Avenue, which you can tell from the roaring sounds of waves, is now underwater. Hurricane Ian made landfall over Florida on Wednesday as a severe Category 4 storm. It unleashed 150-mile-per-hour winds and 12- foot storm surges that submerged cars, knocked over houses and left more than one million residents without power. From Fort Myers to Key West, where my colleague Frances Robles documented the flooding. It's interesting because this area was actually dry an hour or two hours ago when I came out earlier. an hour or two hours ago when I came out earlier. And the authorities keep saying that even though Hurricane Ian passed during the night,

that the worst of the storm surge was going to come afterwards, that it was going to come today, that it's going to come tomorrow, and maybe even Friday. And lo and behold, exactly what they said was going to happen is what happened. The greatest damage seemed to occur on Florida's southwest coast, off the Gulf of Mexico, where videos showed entire neighborhoods underwater.

Now it is our meteorologist's view that the storm surge has likely peaked and will likely be less in the coming hours than it has been up to this point. During a news conference, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that the worst appeared to be over, but that Ian would still go down as one

of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the state. But the fact is there's going to be damage throughout the whole state, and people in other parts of the state be prepared for some impacts. The storm is now expected to move north and inland to cities like Orlando.

Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison and Will Reed. It was edited by Michael Benoit, contains original music by Alicia Bietube, Dan Powell, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Valerie Hopkins and Anton Trinovsky. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

We'll see you tomorrow.