Thousands of Russians demonstrated on February 24, 2022 against their country’s invasion of Ukraine and emotionally called for protests on social media.
(Photo: dpa)
“What are you running from? Don’t you want to defend Russia if NATO invades here?” the man is said to have shouted. He interrogates the 28-year-old programmer Anton Kovalev at an airport in St. Petersburg. “He wasn’t wearing a uniform,” he told the Tagesspiegel on the phone. It’s Monday, Anton Kovalev actually wants to get on a plane to leave Russia.
“With the war, I quickly realized that it was time to flee.” Rumors circulated among his circle of friends that the Russian government could soon announce martial law and young men could be drafted into the army. And that Russia’s borders abroad would soon be completely closed. That Russia will become a dictatorship. “I didn’t want any of that,” says Kovalyov. “Neither fight in the Russian army for a senseless war, nor live in a country that walls itself into prison.”
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