When 21-year-old Daniil Mukhametov acquired discover to report for normal navy service within the Russian Army, he selected a path to security that concerned a leap into the darkish from a transferring prepare and a manhunt aiming to trace him down.
Mukhametov comes throughout as shy and reserved as he tells the story of his dramatic escape to the West in an interview with RFE/RL’s Current Time. The chain of occasions started in March this 12 months, when he acquired call-up papers summoning him to a recruitment workplace in Domodedovo, close to Moscow.
“I did not see that I had any possibility aside from leaving Russia,” he stated. But after receiving the discover that he was being drafted into the military for obligatory navy service, he was additionally barred from worldwide journey.
His reply was to purchase a prepare ticket from the western metropolis of Smolensk to Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea. The prepare begins and finishes in Russia however passes by means of Belarus after which Lithuania. It doesn’t cease in Lithuania, which is a member of the European Union and NATO.
‘I Hope I Don’t Kill Myself’
Mukhametov purchased a ticket to Kaliningrad and boarded the prepare on June 17. The part of the route by means of Lithuania lasts 227 kilometers earlier than re-entering Russian territory. Night had fallen. Mukhametov jumped.
Thinking again to that second, he stated his foremost thought was “I hope I do not kill myself, as a result of the prepare was touring at about 40-45 kilometers per hour.”
According to Lithuanian media experiences, the police stated a railway guard seen an open door because the prepare approached Kybartai, the final Lithuanian city on the border with the Kaliningrad exclave.
The Lithuanian authorities sprang into motion. Hundreds of border guards and police started a manhunt with canine, drones, and helicopters. On TV information experiences, officers requested anybody who noticed the fugitive to name an emergency quantity.
In Lithuania’s parliament, former Defense Minister Laurynas Kasciunas stated “This is a matter of inside safety…. We’re speaking about attainable sabotage teams.”
But by some means, Mukhametov evaded the dragnet. From Lithuania, he traveled onward by hitchhiking and taxi rides by means of Latvia to Estonia, the place he caught a ferry to Finland. All 4 international locations are within the EU’s Schengen space, the place individuals don’t often must current passports or id playing cards to cross borders.
‘Recognized As A Suspect’
The Finnish authorities rejected Mukhametov’s asylum request on the premise that he had traveled by means of one other EU nation and that — underneath the bloc’s asylum guidelines — he ought to request political asylum there.
Facing deportation to Lithuania, he has sought to problem the choice on the European Court of Human Rights.
Mukhametov fears Lithuania might ship him again to Russia, the place he would face imprisonment for draft evasion and persecution for searching for asylum within the EU.
Human rights activists have criticized Lithuania’s method to asylum. An Amnesty International report in 2023 famous “many Russian and Belarusian nationals have been refused asylum” amid nationwide safety issues.
The migration division on the Interior Ministry instructed RFE/RL it could not focus on “attainable situations” of Mukhametov’s state of affairs, including “each foreigner current on the territory of the Republic of Lithuania might submit an utility for asylum.”
The Lithuanian prosecutor common’s workplace stated that “the international citizen laid out in your request has been acknowledged as a suspect” and that additional selections can be taken “within the pretrial investigation” as soon as extra data had been gathered.
If Mukhametov is returned to Russia, he is also jailed for speaking to Current Time, as a result of RFE/RL has been labeled as an “undesirable group” by the Russian authorities, and for criticizing Russia’s warfare in Ukraine.
Mukhametov stated that, as a 17-year-old watching the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, he was horrified by it. “It damage that there was nothing I might do to cease it,” he stated.
His emotions concerning the warfare seem to have intensified over time.
“I might speak about what I see, about how so many die and are available again to Russia in coffins,” he stated, including that draftees have been being compelled into signing contracts for ongoing navy service. This makes it legally attainable to ship them to Ukraine.
Mukhametov emphasised that no person else was concerned in his resolution to flee.
