On February 19, 2022, mobilization was announced in the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic”. In just a few days, Donetsk became a “city of women” — everyone who was available was sent to the front, and the rest tried to avoid mobilization as best they could, mostly by not showing up on the street.

According to the “Eastern Human Rights Group”, by mid-June, about 140 thousand people were forcibly mobilized in the so-called “DPR” and “LPR” (Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine), of which 48 to 96 thousand were sent to the front, and the rest to the rear. There was no exact data on the population of the “DPR”, but, according to rough estimates, about two million people lived in the “republic”, including women, children and the elderly.

According to article 51 of the Geneva Convention, “the occupying Power will not be able to force protected persons to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces. Any pressure or propaganda in favor of voluntary enlistment in the army is prohibited.

“Yura, Kostya and Pasha (the names of the heroes have been changed, — ed.) escaped from mobilization in the “DPR” and managed to illegally cross the border. For obvious reasons, we don’t give their real names. Despite the fact that the heroes have already left the Donetsk region, they still face criminal liability there.

How and where the young people managed to escape and how they live now, Yura, Kostya and Pasha told ASTRA.

A resident of Perevalsk in the “LPR” was forcibly put on a bus as part of the “mobilization”, on September 18, 2022

Yura, a Donetsk citizen, is 29 years old. As a child, he was seriously interested in football, supported Shakhtar Donetsk. He recalls that Shakhtar’s winning of the UEFA Cup in 2009 caused him a similar emotional shock, as did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Only then the shock was from joy, and now from horror.

“Both then and now I woke up for two weeks and thought I had dreamed it,” Yura recalls.

Yura traveled a lot in Russia, and celebrated the New Year 2022 with his friends in Moscow. He was also looking for a job there, and in February 2022 he was interviewed remotely at a Moscow company with a salary of 60 thousand rubles. He was going to move to the capital literally in a week, but was accidentally late. He says that events in the city began to develop rapidly in the week before February 24, 2022. Local, Russian and world media reported on the exercises of both Russian and Belarusian troops on the borders with Ukraine, and, according to him, he, like the majority of the population of Donetsk, felt the approach of an open conflict, although there was no special activity on the conditional border of the “DPR” with Ukraine.

“And on the 18th, the “head of himself,” as many people in Donetsk call him, the Penis of Dushilin, is already such a local meme, just announces that everything is over. Both women and children were abruptly taken to Rostov [Rostov-on-Don] and the surrounding regions of Russia. To evacuate,” Yura recalls.

According to him, such a decision by the authorities came as a surprise to residents. Employees of the local Ministry of Emergency Situations offered everyone evacuation by buses in crowded places. Also, Yura says, the departure of employees of state institutions was quickly organized. The men were not taken, and two hours after the evacuation was announced, it was explained that men from 18 to 55 years old were prohibited from leaving the “DPR”.

Kostya, a 30-year-old Donetsk resident, confirms Yura’s words. He remembers this day well — it was his birthday on February 18, so he remembered not only the very beginning of the evacuation, but also the exact date. With his girlfriend and mom, he went to a cafe to celebrate the holiday. The place was empty, because, as Kostya recalls, “panic began due to a lack of understanding of the reasons for the evacuation, and on the same day gasoline began to run out at gas stations.” Friends called and wished me a happy birthday, but no one came, because they preferred to stay at home because of the news. The evacuation was discussed with the girlfriend and mother at the table, and they immediately said that they would not go anywhere, since there was no understanding where they would go and why they needed it. A little later, “measures to attract new personnel to existing military formations” of the unrecognized republic began in the city.

“The clubs started to slow down. People could just raid them closer to 10-11 pm in masks, [put] everyone on the floor. Those who had nothing to do with it. Those without connections were taken away and not released. Well, like the last [days] before the announcement [of the outbreak of war on February 24], they already started rowing [people for mobilization],” recalls 28-year-old Pasha.

During this period, he was ill with covid and was mostly at home. On the day of the evacuation announcement, a car with loudspeakers drove around the area, announcing that residents needed to come to the collection points with their belongings. Pasha and his friends decided to take a walk around the area at this time. According to him, it felt that there were significantly fewer people on the street.

“We discussed [with friends] what was going on, but we couldn’t imagine what would happen on February 24th. We agreed that this is probably a “show off for Moscow” against the background of the recognition by the Russian authorities of the “DPR” and “LPR,” says Pasha.

February 19-20, 2022 fell on Saturday and Sunday, so Kostya stayed at home, and on February 21 he went to work in an office in the center of Donetsk. In the afternoon, Kostya’s colleagues began to take time off from work: they reported that their relatives had been taken away by the commandant’s office right on the street, for example, while walking with the dog. There were more and more such news from acquaintances every day. After the decree on general mobilization was issued on February 19, local chat rooms and telegram channels began reporting addresses where “the commandant’s office goes and picks up men.”

“When they realized that they could not recruit either people from the streets, they went to state institutions: first, workers (Pushilin ordered enterprises to send 50 percent of employees to mobilize), and then students. Students cannot be taken away by law: while you are studying at the university, you have a reprieve from this whole mess. The students were told: you have to come to the military enlistment office, they will give you a certificate that you are still studying, and everything will be fine with you. They came there, but they didn’t go back,” Yura recalls.
According to him, most of the acquaintances who found themselves in military enlistment offices remained out of touch and did not let themselves be known for several weeks because their phones were taken away. Rumors began to appear that if you sign a contract, that is, voluntarily report to the military enlistment office, then you will be sent to guard some part or object in a more or less safe place, and not sent to storm.

“I have friends in the authorities who called me and said that I would need to stay at home for a week or two and keep my head down,” Kostya says. He decided to heed this advice.

Yura says that the problems with water supply in Donetsk are of a long-term and systemic nature.

“You have cold water turned on every three days all year. And then, not everywhere and not always. And only a small trickle. Now it seems that they have started to turn it on every two days. And there has been no hot water for almost two years. And my friend, Pasha, had his father go somewhere to collect water,” says Yura.
According to Pasha, his father was taken off the bus when he went to get water in another area of the city. They left his phone, but they sent him straight with water, right in the same clothes he was wearing, to a collection point near Donetsk, then to a camp in Dzhankoy (a city in the annexed Crimea) for a month and after that to the Kherson region.

Already on February 21, 2022, on Monday, Kostya decided to stay at home, as his friends from the authorities advised, and work remotely. According to him, his colleagues and acquaintances also did the same. “There were versions that some kind of leadership from Russia would come and we need to show that we have a large army there or something. And it was only on February 24 that it became clear why people were being gathered,” Kostya says.

Pasha continued to be ill all this time. “I went to the hospital for another week while everyone was sitting, because I had documents on hand that I was on sick leave. I walked, but no one came across on the way, and after that I also settled at home. And he sat quietly,” Pasha recalls.

Men were helped to hide from the commandant’s office and mobilization by close people — women or relatives who received reservations. They brought food, water and other necessities, as it soon became clear that it was dangerous to go outside even within the entrance and courtyard of your own house. “A kid was caught in my parents’ house, who came out of the entrance to the store, which is 30 meters away,” Kostya says.

Over time, the precautions became even more serious: the windows were tightly closed, the lights turned on only if absolutely necessary, they did not respond to calls or knocks on the door, since the commandant’s office could come under the guise of a visit by “housing and communal services workers or postmen,” Kostya recalls. As a result, Yura spent two months in such voluntary captivity. Kostya, in his own words, “sat for 100 days exactly.” Pasha received a reservation from his organization in April 2022.

“It was very scary even to ride in the elevator, because I understood what would happen if the door opened — and here they are. What should I do then?” recalls Pasha.

Yura says that in two months he left the apartment three times, and then only at night: to take out the trash, sit at the entrance in the car of a friend, and after a call from an acquaintance: he went down to pick up the groceries that she brought him, after making sure that there was no one in the yard. Kostya recalls that he did not go outside at all, only to the balcony of the apartment at night, as he was afraid not only of a direct meeting with the commandant’s office, but also did not trust anyone from random passers-by.

“You don’t know what kind of neighbors you really have. Because there were such cases that someone’s son was taken away from him, and he says out of spite: “But there’s more in that house.” Because his son is fighting, and someone else is just sitting there,” Kostya says.

In March 2022, about two weeks after the announcement of mobilization in Donetsk, information began to appear about ways to leave the unrecognized republic. According to the interlocutors, the “DPR” border control did not have the task of detaining men of military age and sending them to military enlistment offices, the commandant’s office and the military at checkpoints, including those standing on roads and highways, were engaged in this. Pasha remembers why he decided to leave: “You understand that this is (fighting. – Ed.) not until May. May is already here. How did you [think]? First in May it will all be over, then at the end of summer it will all be over… You understand that it will last a long time.” He also recalls that the mobilization bookings were for exactly six months from February 21, that is, it was assumed that everything would end in six months. That is why, at first, many believed that it was possible to sit out in Donetsk.

Yura says that the appearance of ads in local public sites and channels, with proposals to take potential conscripts abroad, that is, to the Russian Federation, against the background of fear and distrust, looked suspicious, there were rumors that men could also be caught in this way to be sent to war. Therefore, Donetsk residents used a proven and reliable method — word of mouth, through which contacts of reliable carriers were transferred from hand to hand. In the case of Yura, the mediator was an acquaintance who, until February 24, 2022, was engaged in organizing trips of Donetsk residents to Ukraine — Kharkiv and Kiev. Such trips, often through the territory of Russia, especially during the pandemic, were in demand both for registration or extension of Ukrainian documents, and in order to visit relatives — almost the entire family of Yura lived in Kiev at the time of the outbreak of a full-fledged war.

“And it all closed on the 18th.. The carriers are also men, and they can’t leave either. They can’t even transport people. But, of course, they still had some connections, and they somehow began to negotiate, to look for ways to leave,” says Yura.

Kostya recalls his observations: “A lot of people left work, the neighbors left the yard where you grew up. And you talk to them, and they say, “Yes, there are people who take others out. And you realize that this is real, it can be done.” According to his memoirs and information gathered from acquaintances, the methods of departure and the cost of such services varied from case to case — from 40 thousand rubles to 2000 dollars (140 thousand rubles at that time. – Ed.). On the other hand, Pasha, who eventually received a reservation from the institution where he worked at that time, actually “left for 230 rubles” by simply buying a train ticket through the Uspenka border crossing.

Yura spent almost two months at home. He described his usual day like this: “I eat, sleep, play computer games, watch TV. That’s it.” At the same time, he made inquiries about ways to leave, verified contacts, and approximate amounts for the service of leaving the “DPR”. He left Donetsk on April 11, 2022. After agreeing on the price with a familiar carrier, he was told to wait for a call. He packed his bags and documents and was informed late in the evening that a gray Suzuki would arrive for him in two hours. Yura packed up and left, having previously left the keys in the entrance, since he did not live by registration, but in his grandfather’s apartment, and hid the bags “at the entrance, next to where the door is, where the garbage is dumped through the pipeline.” Then everything did not happen exactly as Yura expected: “The driver pulls up, I sit down next to him. He’s like, “Money.” I give it to him, and he says, “That’s it, they’ll come for you in an hour.” I’m asking again: “What do you mean? Aren’t we going now?” He says, “No, they’ll come for you in an hour. Come out. I’ll send the number.” I am coming out. It’s almost 12 o’clock at night outside. I hid in the bushes in the middle of an empty courtyard.” As a result, Yura waited for the next car for an hour and a half, hiding bags with documents and valuables in the basement of his house. “I hid my bags in case I had to run away from the commandant’s office”.

Soon a jeep with Abkhazian license plates arrived (from 2014 to the present day, the Pyatnashka brigade, originally formed by residents of Abkhazia, is fighting on the side of the “DPR” – Ed.), where two men in military uniforms and one guy in civilian clothes were in the front seat behind. As it turned out later, he was also leaving the mobilization. According to Yura’s feelings, they drove “120 km/hour to the floor” along the central streets of Donetsk and along the highway, turned on flashing lights, without stopping at checkpoints (in the “DPR” the military has been allowed to use special signals since 2015. – Ed.).

“You go and think, what if it’s all a trap? You’re just worried. What if they dump you at the border? And if something happened there, they will be stopped now, and they will not be able to do anything. What if they get caught taking people out? Do you understand? Two months later, rumors began to circulate that checks were being carried out on those who export illegally,” says Yura.

The last checkpoint was 50 meters from the border. Yura was dropped off at the barrier, sent to passport control and promised that everything would be fine.

“I come up and give you my passport. And there’s a guy of 130 kilograms: “How did you end up here?”. I waved to the side: “And there. They brought us here.” The peasant put a stamp on it, and we passed,” Yura recalls. In general, Yura describes his trip with the military and crossing the border as follows: “You just go and don’t pray, but you think: “The main thing is to leave. We’ll leave — and then we’ll figure it out.” As a result, on the other side of the border, he was met by a friend from Rostov-on-Don and took to his place to stay for a couple of days. They also dropped off a neighbor in the car to the city.

“And only then did I understand: “Fuck, my God, I’m in a place where there is a human right. And the man here is a man, not an ant, they won’t just take you here and kill you, they won’t drive you wherever you want, like a herd,” Yura recalls. Then, in April 2022, active measures to replenish the ranks of military personnel in the combat zone had not yet been carried out in Russia — “partial mobilization” with ignoring delays was announced only four months later, pressure on migrants and conscripts to sign contracts had not yet begun, and the recruitment of prisoners in colonies into illegal military formations no one even imagined I couldn’t imagine.

Kostya left a month after Yura. He remembers that he stayed at home after the mobilization was announced on February 21, and worked remotely, since the position allowed him not to come to the office. He counted exactly 100 days of his voluntary imprisonment, each of which was repeated like groundhog day: “I woke up, sat down at the computer, worked until the evening. In the evening, when it gets dark, I just went out on the balcony and sat, breathing fresh air. I had dumbbells, I trained at home. That’s it.” Kostya had never left the house before his departure. He recalls that he finally decided to get out of Donetsk not only because it became clear that “all this is for a long time.” There was a fuel facility next to Kostya’s house, after the arrival of a projectile into which windows were shattered in a neighboring house. He realized that it was becoming too dangerous to stay here. Kostya also recalls another story of the spring of 2022:

“Plus, I was also pushed very strongly [to leave Donetsk] by the story of Lugansk mothers and girls. When the men were taken away, they protested, and they were all arrested, a criminal case was opened for “discrediting” and they were threatened with years in prison. And I realized that by staying here, I was putting not only myself in danger, but also my mother and my girlfriend. I know them, and if they take me away somehow, they won’t keep quiet. It was then that everything turned upside down for me, and I realized that I needed to leave,” Kostya sums up.

Through friends, he found out the number of the person with whom he had agreed to pay 40 thousand rubles. The carrier asked him to be ready to leave immediately in the coming days. Kostya was warned about his departure 40 minutes in advance. The driver asked to pay the money only after passing the border. The car had the usual “DPR” license plates, we drove in the afternoon along inconspicuous roads, and then “through fields where there was no road at all.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen such a place. We were driving where there were just some bumps. Maybe there were some paths there 40-50 years ago, but this is not a full-fledged road. There were no people there at all. There are no checkpoints. Some houses in the distance. And so, through the fields, in an old dead car, we drove directly to the border,” the guy recalls.

According to Kostya’s recollections, they didn’t talk much. He mostly listened to the monologue of the driver, who expressed obvious dissatisfaction with the war and joked a lot about it. Kostya tried to keep silent, explaining that this was the first time he had seen this man and did not trust him. As a result, we arrived at a checkpoint where Kostya had never been — the Marinovka border checkpoint. Unlike the Uspenka checkpoint, where there was a commandant’s checkpoint in front of the border control, however, there were no additional checks. The car was left in front of the border, as the passage was only for pedestrians. According to Kostya’s recollections, the border guards had no questions for him, despite the fact that he passed through customs with Ukrainian documents. After they found themselves on the Russian side, Kostya gave the money to the carrier, and 10 minutes later another elderly man drove up to them, who took him to Taganrog. As Kostya understood from the conversation between the drivers, they were father and son.

It was easier for Pasha, who left the “DPR” in the summer, than for the rest. He received a reservation from the university with which he collaborated, and the only obstacle to departure was the lack of a business trip sheet — a paper confirming the official need to leave the “DNR”. The university refused to issue such a sheet, but Pasha agreed with friends in a public organization and still received the coveted paper. A friend drove him to the Uspenka checkpoint in an official car with special numbers.

“That’s why they didn’t just stop him, and I was with the documents if anything happened. As a result, we were checked only by two small ones at a checkpoint in front of the border. Well, as small ones, they are just some kind of military students,” says Pasha.

He believes that it was the inexperience of the inspectors that helped him pass the test. “They [the military at the checkpoint] just looked at the availability of [documents]. He saw that I had a reservation, although I had a reservation from one job and a business trip sheet from another. And he just saw a couple of seals, he didn’t even read them. And that’s it, he said, go,” says Pasha.

Yura spent one day in Rostov-on-Don, spending the night with a friend.

“Life stopped there [in Donetsk] in 2014 and even rolled back decades. Coming to Russia: civilization. Road markings, gas stations (laughs). Everything works well, there are a lot of all kinds of products, sweets that we do not have. And everything else. You look at it all differently,” Yura is surprised.

The next day, he bought a bus ticket to Moscow, contacted his friend from Donetsk, who had long settled in the capital, and agreed to stay with her for the first time. As a result, he stayed with her until December. Meanwhile, Yura’s parents and brother started their journey to Moscow from Ukraine. “You can’t earn anything in the “DPR”, so my parents went to work in Kiev in 2019. First, my stepfather left: he worked there for a year, lived there himself. Then my mother moved there with a little one,” Yura recalls. After February 24, 2022, they evacuated from Kiev to the west of Ukraine, and in April 2022, when the eldest son got out to Moscow, they decided to go to him.

“When they announced this whole situation [the beginning of a large-scale invasion], they thought how to take the little [brother of Yura] out of there [from Ukraine], who turned out to be on the other side of the barricades, but with the same problems [as mobilization]. We bought documents for the little [Yura’s brother] that he was studying at an institute in Poland. They arrived at the border [of Ukraine and Poland], where their documents were screened [checked]. They [the border guards] say: “We will call any teacher from there now. You are the fifth person who came with documents from this university today. I won’t let you through, but I won’t arrest you either, although I can. All I can do for you is to say — try on the other border,” says Yura.

The next day, they were able to leave through another border checkpoint. We drove through Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, and entered Russia. Now they live in Moscow, not far from the Jura. According to him, a small community of “Donetsk” has formed in Moscow. Periodically, they help each other with job search, adaptation, household issues and even going to play board games. Another part of Yura’s acquaintances from Donetsk, who moved to Ukraine from the “DPR” in 2014, unsubscribed from him on Instagram when they saw that he was in Moscow. At the same time, Russian relatives are wary of him.

“My grandfather has a cousin here. When I arrived, he helped me get a temporary registration for two months. Well, I offered to stay in his room. On the floor. But I didn’t really want that. He had a conversation when his mother arrived, six months later. They were friends, they talked. And he said this to my mom: “Why did you even come here? Have you seen what’s going on with you? Go and defend your own. I was defending my own.” And it burns my ass off. Well, then his son goes fishing in the Moscow region, and is not there?”— Yura is indignant.

Initially, Kostya and Olya planned to stay in Russia, but in the end, after learning that their relatives had settled in France, they decided to go to them, since with Ukrainian documents in their hands they could also claim protection and support in the EU. “They [relatives] offered to at least try to get to them. In any case, it was more reliable, because I did not want to stay in Russia, realizing that if there was a mobilization in Donetsk, then perhaps there will be here,” Kostya argues. He and Olya bought tickets to Warsaw on a regular bus from Donetsk. Upon landing, a new problem was discovered: when he passed the border, he did not fill out the “migration form”. A migration card is, in fact, a questionnaire that must be filled out when crossing the Russian border. The information contained in the migration card indicates how long you have been in Russia and that your stay here is legal. It contains the most important personal data about a foreigner. And Kostya didn’t have it.

Somewhere near Moscow, traffic police officers stopped their bus and began checking their documents. Due to the absence of a “migrant card”, Kostya was asked to come out “to talk.” In a wooden booth in the middle of the field, where there was only a table and chairs, as Kostya says, the inspector, due to the lack of the necessary document, began a long conversation, accusing the guy of being “from the Azov battalion.”

“He said they were going to take me off the bus now: that is, the bus will go on, and they will deal with me, check how I crossed the border, and so on,” Kostya says.

He understood that for the absence of a “migrant worker” he would face a maximum fine or warning, but he also understood that the bus could leave without him, and how to get to the border in this case is unclear. Therefore, Kostya suggested that the inspector “negotiate.”

“He [the inspector] asked me how much money I had. I said 10,000 rubles. “Do you have any dollars?” he asks. I reply, “Only 200.” He continues: “And the girl?” I’m saying that the girl has her money. He sat for a while, thought about it, gave me my passport and said, “Okay, bring the dollars. Put them in your passport.” After I gave him the money, he let me go. I ask him: “Will you give me some kind of certificate that everything is fine with me? Or maybe there are such posts every hundred meters?” He says, “Don’t worry, there are no more.” And for some reason, the driver also warned us that we were going to Perm and should not tell anyone that we were going to the border. And the traffic cop also put me in the mood, after he said: “You don’t even have to go to the border, they won’t let you out there without a migration card.” All this time, the “if they let me in, they won’t let me in” was throbbing in my head. At the border, I said that I had lost my “migration card”. The border guard checked me on the computer and said that everything was fine,” Kostya says.
Already in Warsaw, Kostya and Olya received help by volunteers. They told them where to spend the night, eat, take a shower and bought train tickets to Berlin. In Berlin, they were also oriented on the spot and sent tickets to Paris, where they were already met by a friend of the Oli family, and the local branch of the Red Cross bought them tickets to a small town where the family reunited and still lives. Kostya recalls that they didn’t have to pay for anything all the way from Poland to France, thanks to Russian volunteers and local charitable initiatives.

Now the guys communicate a lot with their compatriots. They go to French courses together and help each other. At the same time, everyone is surprised how they managed to get out of the “DPR”. At first, Pasha, like Kostya, thought of going to the EU, but among his relatives and friends he did not find anyone who would like to leave with him, so he first stayed in Rostov, and a couple of months later decided to go to Moscow, where there were many more friends. There Pasha found a job and studies. His sisters transferred to study in St. Petersburg. The situation is more complicated with my mother and father: my father was mobilized, and is still listed as liable for military service, but, according to Pasha, he tries to “cut off” as much as possible for health reasons, since “when he sat there [in the war zone], he doesn’t like it anymore.”

“There is no way to convince adults. Ukraine is everything. These are our enemies. And after February 21, 2022, the beginning of mobilization in the “DPR”, they often argued with them. But it’s hard to explain,” says Pasha.

As for the friends who left for Ukraine, he says that friendly communication persists, although sometimes he sees publications on their social networks that seem to him unnecessarily belligerent. Pasha is also happy for those who were able to leave for Europe.

“It’s a pity for the people who are in Donetsk, because, of course, there is no life there now. There’s a hell of a lot out there. In 2014, there were still some conditional hopes, but now there is nothing,” Pasha sums up.
Chapter 6. The Fog of the Future

Kostya plans to eventually return to Donetsk, says he “wants to go home.” “I don’t know when I’m going, under what circumstances, but I want to,” he says.

Pasha believes that there is no point in returning to Donetsk from Moscow. “Everything will not be solved quickly, and we will have to start all over again. We have already started a lot, in 2014, in 2022. Everyone makes plans, you begin to understand what you should do, what to do… And again, everything is fucked up,” says Pasha.
Yura does not want to return to Donetsk either.

“No. My city… What is the right way to say it? Fuck. He was destroyed. I loved Donetsk very much until 2014. Then I stayed in Donetsk. You love this city. You love, you love. And at some point it turns into hatred for this city. It feels like you’re his fucking hostage,” Yura says.

He describes Donetsk after 2014 as a gray zone, as a city in which there is no civilization, as a city that lives in stagnation, where there is no “normal human life” for anyone except some that are close to the local “authorities” and military formations. Despite the fact that Yura received Russian citizenship, documents and, in theory, may be subject to mobilization already on the territory of the Russian Federation, as for the possible prospect of personal voluntary and compulsory participation in the war, he says unequivocally that he will not go to war in any case. And also sums it up quite emotionally

“Just don’t touch me and don’t touch my family,” Yura says. — That’s it. Whose city will it be [Donetsk]? Yes, in general, I don’t give a f*ck. Put the Zimbabwean flag there. People don’t give a shit. Just let them live. That’s it.”