The Russians are leaving the country after the announcement. Unusually long queues to leave Russia were reported overnight and into the morning on Thursday at the same time as sleepiness at the borders – including those with Mongolia and Kazakhstan in the east and Georgia in the south – with hundreds of cars pictured stuck in a huge traffic jam on night. In the Chelyabinsk region bordering Kazakhstan, dozens of men were seen standing near their cars on the vast steppe shortly after dawn. At Moscow airports, border guards reportedly conducted spot checks on young men, asking them about their eligibility to be drafted. The mobilization decree signed by President Putin on Wednesday left room for interpretation. Assurances from Russia’s top officials that they would only recruit veterans with combat experience contradicted numerous reports from around the country that the mobilization was much broader.
“People are fleeing to Mongolia”
Images of tearful farewells between middle-aged men and their shocked wives on Thursday morning emerged from Russia’s remote Yakutia in eastern Siberia, where women wept and hugged their husbands before boarding buses to an education center after being summoned earlier in the day . In Buryatia, a poor Russian region five time zones away that became a major source of soldiers in the first six months of the invasion, a local journalist expressed outrage at her husband, a 38-year-old father of five with no military background. call. “Buryatia saw one of the most terrifying nights in its history,” local anti-war activist Alexandra Garmazhapova said on social media. “People are fleeing to Mongolia.”
