Women take the lead as volunteers help Russians flee mobilisation
A network of volunteers, stretching from Russia to Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, have stepped forward to help thousands trying to escape Russia's mobilisation.
By Anastasia Stognei and Viktoria Safronova
The continuing exodus of Russians fleeing mobilisation has resulted in chaotic scenes in many border areas. People are stuck in queues stretching back miles, with nerves fraying as they use up the last of their savings on shelter, transport and bribes. But help is at hand from a network of volunteers stretching from Russia to Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, who have stepped forward to transport people to border areas and support them when they reach the other side.
Internet café chain owner Sidzho is out on the streets of his home town Uralsk for the third evening in a row in search of Russians with nowhere to stay.
“You can tell straight away from the bags, backpacks and suitcases who has just arrived,” he says.
Uralsk – a city of 200,000 people in north-western Kazakhstan, has become a key transit point for people fleeing across the border from Russia. In the first three days after mobilisation was announced, almost 17,000 Russians passed through the city – that’s about 20% of the total number who have arrived in Kazakhstan.
Sidzho has opened up his cafes to newly arrived Russians who have crossed the border and have nowhere to spend the night. On an average night he provides shelter for as many as 40 people.
“People have walked 30-40 kilometres, they are stressed and don’t have the strength for anything,” he says. “We give them free Wi-Fi, they can call their relatives and search for an apartment. Our managers are spending their own money to buy them something to eat.”
“How can we not help? It’s heart-breaking”
The border between Russia and Kazakhstan stretches for almost 8,000 kilometres. There are many crossing points and at almost all of them people are now stuck for days in queues stretching back kilometres.
“It’s the steppe, there is nothing there. No toilets, benches, walls, stops – nothing. You just stand there in a field. And the wind is constantly blowing,” says Grigorii, a designer. He and his wife made it to Kazakhstan having waited for over 30 hours at the Vishnevka crossing point.
“It was complete chaos at night. We had to sleep by the side of the road in turns, so that no one jumped ahead of us. Thankfully, someone shared a sleeping bag with us, otherwise we would have simply frozen there.”
Sidzho, says he is in constant touch with the local authorities and is getting regular calls from them asking if he can find room for more new arrivals.
“I also go to the station every morning at 6am and collect around 20 people.”
The evacuees initially react with caution when Sidzho offers them an overnight stay. “I tell them: don’t be scared, this is in our blood, it’s our mentality not to abandon those in trouble.”
The manager of the local cinema, Dillara Mukhambetova, has had a similar experience. “You can see them wandering the streets, unable to find shelter, but reluctant to ask for help. They’re surprised when we help them.”
Three days after the start of mobilisation Dillara made a late-night phone call to the owner of the ‘City Centre’ shopping centre, where her cinema is located. “I said, let’s open through the night, for free, because of this situation. He agreed and even paid for 24-hour security.”
Now 200-250 people stay in the cinema screening halls every night. “Those that have sleeping bags lay them out on the floor. Others fold the seats down and lay across them. Volunteers bring them something to eat and hot drinks.”
Staff at the ‘Three Minnows’ cafe, are now providing free lunches to as many as 70 people every day. Hot food, salads, bakery goods and tea are all on offer. “We are used to the fact that if something happens, we need to help,” says the manager, Larisa.
A local animal shelter 85 km from Uralsk is also helping out. “Many people are travelling with pets and it’s harder for them to find a place.” says manager Oleg Maksimov. “But we take in people with animals.”
“How can we not try to help?” says 62-year-old Zabira Ayupova. “It’s heart-breaking.”
When her niece told her what was happening in Uralsk, Zabira and her friends collected up some food and warm blankets and headed for the railway station. She met a pregnant woman and her husband who had nowhere to spend the night, and let them stay for free in her one-room flat.
Apologetically, she says she wasn’t able to go back for a second day because she had to look after her sister who had just had a stroke. “But I gave some money to my friend who did go,” she says. Zabira tells the BBC several times that she’s proud of the way Kazakhstan has responded to the crisis.
Nastya, a 21-year-old from Uralsk says she was prompted to try to help after being moved to tears by the levels of aggression aimed at Russians on TikTok.
“These people need help and instead they get this,” she says. She has joined a group of volunteers who take food to the nearest checkpoint, and then drives those who have crossed the border to the city for free. Once the volunteers were attacked by local taxi drivers, unhappy that they were being deprived of their business, Nastya says. The new arrivals came to their rescue.
Ainura from Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan, almost 2,000 kilometres to the east of Uralsk) has taken in a family with a four-month-old baby. “I spotted them on a group-chat set up to help Russians,” she says. “There are no available apartments, no rooms, and no hostels here. Everything is jam-packed. Of course, some people are making a killing, but that’s their choice.”
“Transport Women”
After mobilisation was announced, Aleksandra from Moscow came up with a novel idea. In a post on Instagram she offered to drive anyone wanting to leave to the border, and then drive their car back to Moscow. She was contacted almost immediately by someone she had last seen at her graduation. By the evening of the same day Aleksandra, her former classmate and two other men were on the road to Kazakhstan.
They arrived at the first checkpoint after about a day of travelling. The plan was for her passengers to leave and join the queue while Aleksandra slept in the car and then drove back.
“But it quickly became apparent that the situation there was hopeless. The line wasn’t moving at all. As we decided to turn around, we noticed that the people next to us were looking for a saw. They wanted to make a wooden barrier to stop people sneaking past along the side of the road.”
At the neighbouring checkpoint everything was even worse. A queue of trucks stretched for tens of kilometres. It was too far. Aleksandra and her passengers were forced to turn around again.
“It was scary. I drove past the queue in the opposite lane and the truckers were threatening us through their windows, with metal bars and sticks. I guess they were concerned we would try to jump the line.”
In the end, Aleksandra dropped the men off at Tyoploye checkpoint, where they successfully crossed the border. “When I said goodbye to the guys, it felt as though we had become family”. Aleksandra spoke to the BBC at a petrol station on her way back to Moscow. She plans to rest and then take the next group to the border.
Aleksandra’s friend Farukh also saw her Instagram post and thought this could be a good way to help more people to get out of Russia. He set up a group chat called ‘Transport Women’ which matches up women who are ready to drive people to the borders, with potential passengers. The group already has 700 members.
“The women do the driving, but I help with the organisation. I’ve got time, and they haven’t. I also have the motivation and previous experience of humanitarian work,” he says. It also helps that Farukh is already in a safe place. He fled Russia for Georgia back in March during the first big exodus after the start of the invasion of Ukraine. He now works for a charity called ‘Reshim’.
Buryatia, is the Russian region with the second highest death toll for soldiers sent to the war in Ukraine. Mobilisation here began with mass raids. A group chat for people trying to leave to avoid mobilisation now has almost five and a half thousand members. A large proportion of people who leave are doing so with help from volunteers from the ‘Free Buryatia’ foundation, says its founder, Aleksandra Garmazhapova.
“We looked for drivers and paid for transport – we’ve already filled 10 buses. Money has come in from people all over the world,” she says.
Another foundation, ‘Asians of Russia’, is also helping evacuate people, specifically from Yakutia, Kalmykia and Tyva. These regions have sizeable indigenous populations, who have been particularly affected by the mobilisation effort.
Both organisations put those travelling to Mongolia and Kazakhstan in touch with locals, offering help to find accommodation and fill out the necessary paperwork.
“One journalist told me she’s seen more Buryats in Kazakhstan than in Buryatia!” says Garmazhapova.
Grigorii Sverdlin, from Moscow used to run the ‘Nochlezhka’ charity for homeless people until he was forced to leave Russia back in March. He is now trying to help people escape mobilisatiion. He is about to launch a new project called ‘Go through the woods’. The idea, he explains, is that volunteers will identify safe routes out of the country, find places where people can hide from receiving call-up papers, and provide financial support for tickets.
“The team is tiny, only five people, but they are all workhorses. Thankfully, there are many volunteers. We’ve been finding them – and will continue to do so – in many ways, through reposts on social media and by word of mouth”
“This is serious, and I need a van”
Thousands of miles away in Georgia, Konstantin has just made it through the now almost legendary Upper Lars crossing point, and he describes the scene to the BBC.
“There are piles of rubbish everywhere, and a really strong smell of urine,” he says. “This is what happens when people spend days in a place not equipped to deal with such an influx. It’s a big contrast to the scenery all around – the beautiful Caucasus mountains and the Terek valley with its grey glacial waters.”
For Konstantin this is the end of a very long journey. In order to get to the border from the nearest Russian city of Vladikavkaz, you need to pass through numerous traffic police checkpoints all of which require small bribes to allow cars with number plates from other Russian regions to pass. After that you hit a now famous multi-kilometre traffic jam. It’s freezing cold and thousands of cars are burning up petrol to keep the heating on. People are at the limits of their patience.
Nina is a lawyer who left her job and her home in St Petersburg for Tbilisi in March when the war started. She has started driving new arrivals, from the Upper Lars border crossing to the nearest Georgian village of Stepantsminda, where there’s a café and Wi-Fi. She usually makes around 20 journeys every day.
“Just past the border there is a very steep hill which not everyone has the strength to do on a bike or on foot,” she says. People are allowed to cross the border by any means of transportation, from bikes to hoverboards and on foot. Many have done just that to avoid waiting in traffic, she explains.
Nina says she gets all sorts of passengers. There have been experienced hikers, who travelled all the way from central Russia by bike. There was a father with a four-year-old boy on a scooter. They had been travelling as a family of three with the boy’s mother too. It was coming up to the boy’s birthday and the scooter – a present – had been hidden in the boot. After two days stuck in traffic the father decided to go on ahead with his son, leaving his wife behind in the car, waiting in the queue.
Nina says not everyone is sympathetic to the new arrivals plight. “You hear comments like - Where were you before? What changed your mind?” she says.
“But when I speak to people at the checkpoint I see that rather than just ‘not wanting to die’, they actively do not want this war. They think it’s idiotic and pointless.”
According to Nina and other volunteers, the most dangerous part of the Russian-Georgian border is the zone between the two checkpoints. There are no shops or cafes, and it is practically impossible to provide humanitarian aid. If you drive into the neutral zone from the Georgian side, the only way back is to drive all the way over to the Russian side and join the end of the never-ending traffic jam of vehicles waiting to enter Georgia.
Niko, who moved from Russia to Georgia in March, explains how his friend got stuck precisely in this zone. “He wrote to me and said that everything was bad there. They are sleeping on steps, on cardboard. There is no food, no water and nothing to keep them warm.”
When Niko told his friends about this, they started a group chat to try and help. What followed was a small miracle of ‘self-organisation’. People were added to the chat, who then quickly organised aid, bought food, water, chocolate, biscuits, etc., and went to the border.
Niko continues, “My mate is a strong bloke, I’m not too worried about him. But he told me that there are 150 people trapped in that zone, women and children”.
Help is needed not only in the ‘neutral zone’. Set-designer Maria also left Russia for Georgia in March. She returned to help save her younger brother from being mobilised. Having broken through the traffic to Tbilisi, Maria heard that the situation at the border had become much worse. “I immediately understood two things: this is serious; and I need a van”.
She posted a fundraiser on Instagram, and, in a North Ossetian group chat, found a woman who now helps her buy groceries. On the internet she found a minibus with a ‘very switched-on’ driver.
“It was actually very difficult to find any male helpers, no-one was responding. It feels like everything is being done by women at the moment”. Maria’s minivan has already made two trips from Vladikavkaz to the checkpoint, carrying food, water, and other essentials.
Nina, the lawyer from St Petersburg, is part of a project called ‘Emigrants for Action’. It was set up earlier this year by newly-arrived Russians, with the original aim of helping displaced Ukrainians. The group is now working on plans to set up a shelter for Russian migrants too.
“At first, we were thinking about who the shelter should be open to,” she says. “I thought we should probably have some kind of selection process. But how would we do that? What we ask people? But when I got to the border and started meeting real, live people, I understood that this would have been the wrong approach. We have to let everyone in. Because all I saw were ordinary people who are completely lost.”
Additional writing by Anastasia Platonova.
Read this story in Russian here.