To escape conscription in the war in Ukraine, some Russians flee to retreat in the country of Georgia.
Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, where more Russians have sought a new haven since the beginning of the war in Ukraine."If our people are dying because of the Russian state, shouldn't the Russian people also be ready to stand up even if there is a danger to their lives? They are all to blame for what's happening now.
Since the earliest days of the invasion directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainians made little secret of the moral weight they placed on the Russian people. If Putin’s war was wrong, then his people had an obligation to rebel, rise up, agitate, protest, despite the Russian promise of crackdown on dissent. And in Russian protests, some did.
Across Georgia today, untold thousands of Russians grapple in their own ways with the questions posed by the war. How much responsibility do they share for the decisions of Putin, for the suffering of Ukrainians? And what, if anything, should they do about it? “In my experience, it's usually the same circles of people" who go to the protests, Mulyard said. “It's seldom people from different circles. There's really nobody left to protest."Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY
"I was about a year old when Putin became Russia’s president," Velikanov said one evening in mid-November in Tbilisi, a chaotic, ancient city that is increasingly filled with Russians wearing denim, patterned shirts, vintage dresses, structured coats and beanie hats.Russians fleeing conscription for the war in Ukraine to Georgia are furthering tensions between the two countries that have existed for generations.
"I am always asking myself: Have I done enough? How much am I to blame? This is what we are trying to understand in our discussions. This is the 'language' we are trying to construct," said Velikanov, a philosophy major in college. He fled to Georgia from Russia's largest city in March to avoid being forced to fight in Ukraine.
Still, there are some Russians who believe it is not their responsibility to be held accountable for actions taken by their government, even if their government is murdering civilians.He used to work in a manufacturing plant in St. Petersburg before arriving in Tbilisi in March. Diachenko left Russia because he saw it becoming an international outcast and felt it would be easer to pursue his ambition to work in the technology industry if he were overseas.
“Can I blame Ukrainians for hating us all right now?" Velikanov asked."Of course not. They have that total right. Do I feel moral guilt? Yes. Did I break any laws or do a criminal thing by leaving Russia? No. Do I experience political guilt for letting this happen and not doing more? Yes. But this type of guilt is also not a crime.”
Kyznetsov opened his bar in August, one month before Putin announced a massive troop mobilization after Russia suffered a series of major setbacks on Ukrainian battlefields.Some Russians may prefer to soak up sun on Spanish beaches, party in French nightclubs and selfie from Italian piazzas and ski hubs. As the war has dragged on, that has become harder for them as European countries have restricted access to their territories.
Georgians complain the influx has aggravated a growing housing shortage, supercharged an increase in rents, jammed up commuter traffic routes and generally led to a wave of Russian money that is helpful for short-terms economic gains but unhelpful as it increases Georgia's economic dependence on Russia."All these Russians are walking around Tbilsi talking about how they were so stressed in Russia, how they were stuck, that they are 'refugees.' For me, their emotions are fake.
In Georgia, as in Ukraine, while Russia seized its bordering regions, the rest of the country took steps to unite with the West. Clockwise from above: Rati Khazalia at his print shop called Jpg; Nicholas Shevardnadze at his bar, House of Camora; tour guide Nata Japaridze at a coffee shop in Tbilisi. "Our government right now doesn't have policies about anything,” said Rati Khazalia, 27, a Georgian business owner who founded and runs Jpg, an artsy print shop, across the courtyard from Shevardnadze’s Camaro bar at Fabrika. “We don't know in which direction the country is going. Is it to the West? Or is to the East?"
— Liliya, 27, a Ukrainian who works for an international development organization in Lviv, in western UkraineThey do think they are being squeezed from all sides. “I don’t know what Ukrainians want from us,” said Polina, 23. “If their expectation is that unless the prisons in Russia are full of protesters then we are not doing enough, I don't think that's fair. But I understand their anger. And I understand the only way for them to maybe survive this anger is to direct it at the thing – Russians – that has caused it."He had served in Russia’s military as a reservist.
He said every Russian, to a greater or lesser extent, has some duty to oppose an unjust war like the one in Ukraine, which was unprovoked. He said Russian civilians who are important to the functioning of the state, who are involved in the major social, economic and political institutions of the country, have the greatest responsibility to make clear their opposition to the war because they have more influence over Putin and other people in the Kremlin.
Yet when Albats, the Putin critic who fled Russia by crossing into Estonia this past summer, looks around at her compatriots, she sees little reason to be optimistic.In her interview with Puck, she described Russia's younger generations as"completely spoiled.
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