They don’t want to reveal their real names but it doesn’t matter. What is said matters. For the reasons that led them to leave their country so as not to fight. To desert. Three Russians without papers wanted internationally. One of them is Vasily. He has been in Germany for a month, He was one of the first to desert from the Russian army leaving the country legally. He feels safe in Germany, as he tells Deutsche Welle. But he fears for his family. Russian authorities are looking for him. If caught, he faces up to 15 years in prison for desertion. He studied at the military academy and is committed to serving in the army. But he has been disappointed. His attempts to leave the army did not bear fruit. When Russia attacked Ukraine, he was ordered to the front.

“I cannot fight against my people”

“We were told, get ready, we lack soldiers,” he recalls. But he refused. “I am of Ukrainian descent,” he told his superior: “My father is Ukrainian, I will not fight against my people.” Despite his superior’s threats, the Vasily didn’t go to the front, but he wasn’t fired from his unit either. As he and other deserters told DW, it wasn’t easy to leave the army even before September 21, 2022, when President Putin announced partial conscription. After that became completely impossible. The penalties for leaving the camp without permission and for desertion were increased to 10 and 15 years in prison respectively. “There was no way out,” says Vasily. “I was called by the administration and told: ‘Or you will go to war or we will initiate criminal proceedings against you”. Then you’ll go to prison, from where you’ll be sent to fight anyway.”

That was why Vasily decided to leave Russia. According to the estimates of the “Go by the Forest” organization, which helps Russians avoid conscription to go to war, more than 500 deserters left the country after the conscription announcement. And these are only those who sought help from human rights activists. The real number is probably many times higher. Most are escaping mainly to Kazakhstan or Armenia.

One of them is Victor, communications officer. And he doesn’t want to give his real name. Unlike Vasily, however, he took part in Russian military operations against Ukraine. Via video call from Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, Viktor says he also tried to quit the army. But in February 2022 he was asked to go on an exercise in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which has been annexed by Russia.

It was on February 24 that his unit took part in the Russian invasion. “They woke us up at 5 in the morning, put us in phalanxes and said: “Let’s go!”. But they didn’t say where, “Viktor recalls. “At that moment it was simply impossible to refuse. If you ran forward, the Ukrainians would shoot you, if you ran back, your own people would catch you.” Until the summer of 2022, he was fighting on Ukrainian soil. “I saw executed prisoners of war and heard the relevant orders from the commander of the unit, but we did not have anything similar to what happened in Butsa,” he assures. Victor claims he first learned about the massacres of civilians in Ukraine in late April 2022 when he managed to gain access to the internet. “After that, I revised a lot of things,” he says.

Yevgeni: “I am ready to answer to justice”

And Yevgeny, an officer in a special unit, was also sent to the border with Ukraine for an exercise in February 2022. He comes from a poor family. The army offered the young man social advancement. “We hoped and believed that there would be no war,” he recalls of the last days of that February when the war began. “We thought Putin was a murderer and a thief, but not a fanatic who would start a war. But it turned out to be the opposite,” he admits today. On February 24, he and his unit crossed the border into Ukraine. They reached Brovary near Kiev. “For us it was all very sad. On March 30, almost a whole company was killed,” he says of the fighting. “When we were near Kiev we didn’t take prisoners because there was no way to take them back to Russia, so we executed them, the Ukrainian side did exactly the same,” he says.

Yevgeni assures that he did not participate in the murders. “I am ready to answer to justice. My conscience is clear. Yes, I fought, yes, I shot, but I was also shot, but I also want to live,” he says. After the failed Russian attack near Kiev, Yevgeny’s unit was transferred to the Donbass. In order to escape from there, he shot himself in the leg. “We wounded each other near the Ukrainian positions and said that the Ukrainians shot us. They believed us and took us to a hospital in Russia,” says Yevgeni. For his part, Viktor took leave in mid-August 2022.

Returning to his barracks he attempted to resign, but was unable to do so before conscription was announced. Both officers eventually fled to Kazakhstan. Since criminal proceedings against them are ongoing in Russia, they cannot find official work there. They even have to keep phone cards and bank accounts in other people’s names. They also fear that Kazakhstan could extradite them to Russia. “I see three possibilities for me, France, Germany or the USA, because these countries issue temporary travel documents. Besides, none of us have a passport,” says Victor, noting that he has already contacted their embassies several times and other western countries, but so far without success.

Routes for Russian deserters to Europe

Vasili is one of the first defectors who managed to reach Europe from Kazakhstan without a passport and has found a job as a programmer in an IT company in Germany. The German embassy in Kazakhstan granted him a temporary travel permit for foreigners with a work visa. It was not easy to find a company that would accept a deserter without a passport, Vasily admits. But it was even more difficult to leave Kazakhstan. The first time he tried, he was taken off the plane again because he was on the international wanted database. Vasily tells how his five-year-old daughter ran to all the border guards and asked them to “let daddy out.” The next day, thanks to his lawyer, he was able to leave the country. “It turned out that there are certain conditions under which it is possible,” says Vasily, without giving details: “There is a way out.”

He is now already settled in Germany and talks enthusiastically about his new job. Vasily develops games. He is grateful to Germany for the visa he got and to Kazakhstan for finally allowing him to leave the country. Despite the dangers to his family, he decided to make his story of desertion public so that others would have a chance to escape this bloody war. “I say to all the deserters, to all those who are at the front and are desperate, everything is possible. You don’t have to fight and act against your conscience. You can refuse to participate in these crimes.”