TBILISI, Georgia — Less than three weeks ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the call-up of 300,000 men to bolster army ranks decimated by battlefield routs in Ukraine. Now, in an extraordinary exodus, waves of fighting-age men have fled Russia in what appear to be roughly those same numbers.
By plane or by bicycle, in cars or on foot, at a rate sometimes reaching tens of thousands per day, Russian men desperate to avoid deployment to the front lines — or face long jail sentences for draft evasion — are seeking haven in neighboring and nearby countries.
They have crossed land borders into Finland or Mongolia, booked expensive air tickets to Turkey or Serbia, decamped for the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Georgia and Armenia. In one striking instance, two Russian asylum seekers made their way by boat to a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Sea, the state’s two U.S. senators said.
