When Ilya returned from work on Wednesday, his wife was waiting for him with his military draft papers. Ilya said he quickly packed his bags and departed the next morning for his local recruitment centre in Irkutsk, a city on Lake Baikal in Siberia.
“When the motherland comes calling, you have to answer,” the 27-year-old bus driver said in a brief phone interview from a training ground near the southern city of Rostov. “I decided that I am not going to dodge the draft and will defend the country.”
