Citing State Duma (Russia’s lower chamber of parliament) Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, Rossiyskaya Gazeta (RG) reported on September 28 that authorities begin to draw up lists of those leaving the country during the mobilization.
“We make lists of all those who are on the way out now. Do you think they leave, and no one sees who went, why did they go?” Volodin was quoted as saying at the State Duma session yesterday.
Because of the queues at the borders many people leaving the country leave their cars in Russia. State Duma speaker proposed to give these cars to military families, according to RG.
Meanwhile, some media reports says more than 194,000 Russians have fled call-up to neighboring countries.
AP reported on September 27 that the mass exodus of men — alone or with their families or friends — began on September 21, shortly after Putin’s address to the nation, and continued all the meek. Early on, they reportedly snapped up airline tickets, which spiked in price on the few airlines still flying out of Russia. But the rest had to gas up their cars and join the long lines snaking on roads toward the borders.
According to AP, over 194,000 Russian nationals have fled to neighboring Georgia, Kazakhstan and Finland — most often by car, bicycle or on foot — in the week since President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of reservists.
Putin’s mobilization order shocked millions of Russians who’d previously been largely shielded from the realities of the Kremlin’s seven-month-long so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Some sources say that while Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said it would affect only 300,000 out of 25 million reservists, the call-up sparked a rush to leave the country as reports piled up of men being drafted who were officially exempt.
