The former minister drove his big white truck north until he reached Michigan. The Great Lakes provided a welcome relief from the scorching Texas heat.
After years navigating the byzantine corridors of provincial Russian power, Denis Sharonov now works as a truck driver, steering his way through the vast highways of the US.
“It is heavenly up here in Michigan. Texas was too hot,” said Sharonov, a former agriculture minister of the Komi Republic in northern Russia, in an interview.
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has set off a historic exodus of his own people. Since the start of the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Russians are believed to have left the country, driven by their opposition to the war and the fear of being sent to the frontlines. Many have scrambled to find jobs in exile and plot out new lives from their laptops.
But few career changes are as unusual as that made by Sharonov, who fled Russia in September 2022 after receiving his draft papers.
“A lot of people don’t understand my choice. They mock me. They say I downshifted, from a regional minister to truck driver,” Sharonov said.
“But I don’t see it that way at all. I am proud of what I do,” he added.
Sharonov’s Instagram, once filled with images of him in a suit and tie meeting officials and local farmers in Komi, now resembles one of a travel blogger on a roadtrip across the country.
In 2020, he became the minister of agriculture of Komi, a landlocked region in the north of Russia almost the size of California. He had no previous experience in government but said he had been offered the job after more than a decade in the agriculture industry.
“I was curious to see how government works,” he said, but he quickly grew disillusioned by what he described as “rampant corruption and bureaucracy” that plagued his ministry.
“In Russia, the main reason people get into politics is to steal money. Corruption has ripped my country apart. Either you participate in it or you get tossed out,” Sharonov said.
He claimed he eventually fell out of favour with the regional head, Vladimir Uyba, after Sharonov refused to enter into corrupt land schemes and was dismissed in January 2022.
The month after his firing, Russian troops invaded Ukraine, a decision that left him feeling “deeply disturbed”.
“I realised that by staying in the country, I would be participating in this illegal war one way or another,” he said.
The final straw came when he received a draft order to join the war during Russia’s mobilisation campaign last autumn.
“When military enlistment officers came to deliver a draft summons to my registration address, there was nothing left for me to do but leave the country,” he said.
Sharonov, who at 48 was too old to be mobilised according to Russian law, linked the draft notice to his “drawn-out conflict” with Uyba, who he claimed had tried to get rid of him by sending him to Ukraine.
Unwilling to fight in Putin’s war, he chose to flee the country. Having studied in Vermont during an exchange in 1995, he decided to try his luck in the US.
After a long journey with stops in Kyrgyzstan and Dubai, Sharonov eventually landed in Mexico, where he crossed the US border on foot and applied for asylum.
The US has recorded a massive spike in Russian emigration since the start of the war, with more than 8,600 Russians seeking refuge at the US border with Mexico over the last six months – 35 times the 249 who did so during the same period before the war.
While awaiting the result of his asylum application, Sharonov started to look for ways to earn an income. “Working as a truck driver seemed like the most straightforward way to make a living,” he said.
Pointing to the weak rouble, which hit a 16-month low this week, he said that the money he made driving a truck was not very far off from the salary of a regional minister in Russia, although he quickly added that most officials found other means to make money.
“But it’s not really about the salary. It’s about feeling free. It is an honest job,” Sharonov said.
In six months as a truck driver, he said, he had visited 45 US states, describing in detail the beauty of California’s west coast. “Sometimes it feels like one big adventure, discovering the country on the road.”
He hopes to use his experience to find employment in the agricultural sector.
Sharonov is one of the few former Russian officials who have spoken out against the war. Shortly after the full-blown invasion, Anatoly Chubais, a veteran reformer and former Kremlin climate envoy, quietly resigned. Chubais remains the highest-ranking official to leave the Kremlin since the start of the war.
“Many officials are against the war but are gripped by fear,” said Sharonov. “They get up every morning and convince themselves that they have no other choice.”
No such thoughts bother Sharonov, for whom the open road awaits again. His next stop – Alabama.
