Hours after Russia announced its military mobilization against Ukraine in September, St. Petersburg resident Evgenii Sapozhnikov, 24, and his wife, Natasha, packed their bags and fled across the border to Finland, leaving behind their apartment, their careers, their relatives and the life they once knew.
“We had only two bags. We tried to put our whole lives in these bags,” Sapozhnikov said in a recent interview with Capital News Service from Sweden, where the couple has settled.
“We can’t take all of the winter clothes because when you just try to leave the country, if one of the Finland passport control officers sees your winter clothes, they can ask you about where you’re going. If you say I’m going on vacation to Spain, and they catch the winter clothes… they say ‘What is this?’ ”
Sapozhnikov’s dramatic exit greatly worried his childhood friend, University of Maryland business student Arsenii Karelin, who is also Russian. Since the invasion in February, Karelin, 24, said he has tried to keep in touch with his two closest childhood friends while forcing himself to go to classes in College Park as if his life were normal, when in reality everything has changed. Karelin, a junior, sits in class, chats with peers and carries on with his daily life, while he watches the lives of friends and family in Russia turn upside down.
“The first two to three weeks after it started…. I was pretty stressed,” he said in an interview. “It was hard for me to study and make up my exams…. It’s the first time in my lifetime, but unfortunately not the first time for my country, to be in a situation like this.”
Only 21 students from Russia are enrolled at the university, according to its Office of Institutional Planning, Research and Assistance. To help them through these times, International Students & Scholar Services officials have hosted what they call “listening circles” for Russian and Ukrainian students who want to talk about coping with the crisis.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to quickly overthrow and occupy Ukraine. Instead, the invasion has turned into a months-long slog, with Ukraine forces regaining lost territory and Russia bombing and invading different parts of the country.
The war follows a decade of tension between the nations, inflamed during Ukraine’s pro-Western 2013-2014 Euromaidan Revolution and Russia’s subsequent illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
On Sept. 21, Putin called for a partial military mobilization and drafted thousands of men to fight in Ukraine. The announcement led thousands of Russians to flee to escape the draft. Since then, flights from Russia have been booked, leaving cars, trains and boats as the only options.
Karelin, who moved to Maryland from St. Petersburg with his family in 2018, had encouraged his closest friends to make plans to leave the country.
“I was trying to tell them the same thing, ‘Leave, leave, leave!’ Many of them didn’t listen. Some of them left. And one had to escape [after] the mobilization was announced,” he said. One of his closest friends “was at the border for like 15 hours in the car, at the Finnish border.”
Several of Karelin’s family members still live in Russia, including his uncle and grandmother.
He said he hopes and believes “there will be some kind of revolution in some years ahead” in Russia. Even though he supports Ukraine, Karelin said he feels bad for the Russian people, who will be affected by the war for years to come.
“It does not bring anything, any profit, to the people or any profits to him [Putin.]… He does not benefit from it at all,” he said. “The only reason why he could [invade] is because he’s not rational anymore. That’s one of the most stressful things to understand.”
Karelin’s and Sapozhnikov’s other best friend, Timur Garipov, moved to Passau, Germany, four months before the invasion to earn a master’s degree. The day Russia invaded Ukraine, he woke up ready to take one of his hardest exams, in computer science.
“I woke up at 6 a.m., checked the news on my phone and just thought, ‘Oh wow!’ I called my friend about an hour before the exam and texted a bunch of friends, asking how they feel and what they think,” Garipov said in an interview from Germany with Capital News Service.
“I went to the exam and tried to write something, but I had to ask the examiner to reschedule it…. Then I realized that the Germans maybe don’t even know yet. Maybe they didn’t open the news yet. They said, ‘It’s no problem,’ and I went back home.”
The first two months after the invasion were emotionally difficult, Garipov said, but he felt relieved he was safe. “You feel pressure here [in Germany] from Ukrainians, especially during the first few months. They kind of forced Russians to go out on the streets and protest,” Garipov said.
Garipov’s parents and sister remain in Russia, along with some of his friends. However, he doesn’t think the war will come across the border into Russia, so he is confident they are safe.
“I think it was a huge topic during the first months, that people [Russians] felt guilty about everything that happened,” Garipov said. “At the same time, many psychologists and people on YouTube who are oppositional Russian speakers discussed this topic a lot. I think they have a good idea about everything, that you should separate the guilt and the responsibilities, because you didn’t do that. You don’t need to feel guilty.”
When the war began, Sapozhnikov organized everything he would need to leave, including travel documents. He thought he would have a 12- to 24-hour window to escape the country.
To bring his partner along, the two had to get married. His wife Natasha had dreamed of having a big wedding, but instead the couple married by simply signing the required legal documents. They hope to have a family celebration when the country’s situation improves, he said.
Conversations with their families about leaving were tough. Both sets of parents still live in Russia.
“It was a very stressful situation because they [parents] try to protect us,” Sapozhnikov said, “and say something bad about Europe and about leaving the country, say something about the whole situation. But we had a decision, and we must leave. Everyone was crying… It is very hard when your kids leave.”
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