About 700,000 people leave Russia after announced mobilization
Mobilization to Russia (Photo:REUTERS/Sergey Pivovarov)
About 700,000 people have left Russia in the nearly two weeks following the announcement of a “partial” mobilization in the country, the Russian edition of Forbes business news reported on Oct. 4.
Around 200,000 of them have gone to neighboring Kazakhstan alone since Sept. 21, Kazakh Internal Affairs Minister Marat Akhmetzhanov said.
The Russian envoy to Helsinki, Pavel Kuznetsov, said about 60,000 Russian citizens had entered Finland over the same period.
“Long queues were seen at Russian border checkpoints immediately after the announcement of mobilization on Sept. 21,” Forbes reported.
“The most famous was spotted at the Verkhniy Lars checkpoint on the Russian-Georgian border, where people were standing in line for four or five days, often without food or water.”
There are currently no traffic jams at the border and cars are passing freely, the outlet said.
Queues were also seen at border crossings on the Russian-Kazakh border.
According to Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service, 419,000 people have left Russia since the beginning of the year, which is twice as much year-over-year.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin early on Sept. 21 declared a partial mobilization in Russia and his readiness to use nuclear weapons in the event of a “threat to the territorial integrity” of Russia.
Later Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that 300,000 reservists would be called up during the partial mobilization.
After the announcement, Russians began to buy tickets abroad en masse to avoid participation in their country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s General Staff reported on Sept. 29 that Russia had already called 100,000 people for the war against Ukraine, some of whom have al-ready been deployed to battlefields in Ukraine.
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