Fleeing Russia: Stories of Conscientious Objectors (Part 2)

Invasion, he was tricked into signing a contract to become a proper professional soldier in the Army. Then in 2022, when the full scale invasion happened, he was opposed to that war and made it clear that he was opposed and came under a lot of pressure from his senior officers, and they planned to deploy him to Ukraine to fight in the war. And for Achom, this was something completely beyond the pale, unacceptable that he absolutely would not do. So he made the incredible, difficult decision to leave Russia. How do you go about doing that? Well, just before his deployment to Ukraine, he was allowed a brief period of leave to go home and see his family. And during that leave, he took transport out of Russia via another country that it was easy to cross into from Russia and made his way to Mexico and crossed the U.S. southern border into the U.S. okay, so Artyom represents somebody who was fleeing military service almost as a conscientious objector, the way you describe him. But what about the people who are leaving the country for political reasons, people who feel that they are being targeted by a political crackdown after the start of the war? Yeah, yeah. And there were many, many of those people. Hundreds of thousands of Russians left the country in 2022, now many of them fleeing persecution. There was a huge rise in internal repression inside Russia. And for many people, it just became unbearable to stay in a country where any. Any expression of opposition to the authorities, criticism of the war, could result in a long prison sentence. How much can you tell us about Katya, who we heard about at the beginning? So Katya was involved in opposition politics in a now banned opposition movement inside Russia, and she made the decision to leave and travel to the US because she felt that remaining in Russia as someone who was against the war and against the Kremlin and had been involved in an opposition movement which was now banned as extremist, it was now illegal to show any support for that opposition movement, or if you ever had showed any.