They want to flee, but lack the means. Russians now being forced into military service. To prevent them from becoming “cannon fodder”, Anastasia Sukhanova (32) and Viktoria Romanova-Gok (28) have set up a project to help Russians flee.
The background: The successful counter-offensive by the Ukrainians has put Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin (70) in trouble. Three weeks ago, he therefore announced the largest mobilization in Russia since World War II. Putin said about 300,000 reservists will be called up.
Bribes for the Border Guard
The project of the two Russians is called “Na krivoi koze” airlines. In English: “On the limping goat” airlines. This is an allusion to a proverb. “You don’t travel particularly comfortably on a limping goat, but you do arrive at your destination,” Suchanova tells Blick.
In most cases, the destination is Kazakhstan, Georgia or Armenia. To organize the trips, the two women collect online donations and air miles. “This allows us to buy cheaper tickets,” says Suchanova. So far, about a million rubles (about 15,000 francs) have come together.
However, international flights are hard to come by. Therefore, the ‘passengers’, as Suchanova calls the help-seeker, are flown to airports near the border. From there it is over land across the border.
The risk is high. Sukhanova: “At the border, it’s like Russian roulette. If you want to escape, you also need luck.” One advantage is that the list of conveners is not always up-to-date, so anyone who received the decision from the government could potentially escape, “sometimes we can also bribe the customs officers at the border with Kazakhstan,” she adds. up.
More than 1000 trips organized
“My motivation is to do everything against the war,” says Romanowa-Gok. The Siberian stylist left Russia when the war broke out. She is facing criminal charges for taking part in protests that criticized the regime.
Suchanova from Moscow, who has lived in Spain for 15 years and has worked in marketing, explains it with a simple arithmetic: “The fewer men go to war, the less resources the government has to continue the war.”
The project has been going on for almost two weeks now. According to the two Russians, they have already organized more than 1000 trips. “We hardly sleep anymore,” Suchanova says.
“A wake up call”
The refugees are mainly men between the ages of 18 and 45. “But practically anyone can be called up,” Sukhanova counters, “including women, especially doctors and those with military experience.” There are some young men from poorer regions who do not know what is going on in the country and now fear for their lives.
It is clear to the two women that they are also putting themselves at risk with their project: “We are pretty sure it will affect us, but we have to take this risk.”