Many Russians have also lined up on the country’s borders with Finland and Kazakhstan since last week, when Putin announced that hundreds of thousands of reservists had been called up to fight in the Kremlin’s faltering war in Ukraine. It is the first for Russia military mobilization Since World War II.
Soon after the speech, tickets sold out for the few cities that still had direct flights from Russia and searches on Google spiked for queries like “how to leave Russia”.
Confusion over who might be called up has also prompted thousands to flee, along with fears that Russia’s borders might be closed to men of conscription age.
They don’t have much choice if they don’t want to Posted in Ukraine. Russian flights are banned in European Union airspace and the Baltic states have closed their land borders. In recent days, piles of abandoned bikes near the border points have appeared in footage on social media.
More than 5,000 vehicles were waiting for hours at the border with Georgia on Tuesday, Russian news agency TASS said.
In Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev Tuesday said His country will talk to Moscow about the influx of refugees and seek to “maintain an agreement with neighboring countries”. He called it a “difficult situation” but said there was no reason to panic after tens of thousands of crossings were reported by Russian citizens in recent days.
Finnish authorities said they saw an almost 80% increase in incomes from Russia after the mobilization, but the Finnish border guards also said Tuesday that “the majority of arrivals move to other countries.”
The Kremlin has described reports of the displacement as exaggerated, despite growing signs of a violent reaction to the crowd.
Hundreds of protesters have been arrested by riot police, as rights groups fear the order will disproportionately crowd men in remote or impoverished areas of the country. And at the recruiting station In the Irkutsk regionA man shot and wounded a military recruit on Monday.
Marie Ilyushina contributed to this report.
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