Conscripted Russians called up in the recent mobilization of 300,000 troops to fight in Ukraine will not find any sanctuary in some neighboring countries should they try and flee the draft.
Neighbors Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have said they will not grant asylum to Russians evading President Vladimir Putin's call to service as he continues military operations in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Those countries said they fear a threat to their internal security by allowing the fleeing conscripts into their nations and are not sympathetic to their plight after going along with Putin's prior incursions into Crimea and Georgia, the report said.
Evading Putin's draft could mean 10 years in prison for those objecting to the war and not reporting for duty, as well as a ban on leaving Russia.
Ukrainian officials, however, are letting the drafted Russian soldiers know that they are free to surrender and are promised they would be treated with dignity.
"Forcibly conscripted Russians who do not wish to die ignominiously in a foreign country," Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Twitter. "Surrender when there is a first opportunity. Ukraine guarantees your life and dignified treatment."
The Moscow Times reported Wednesday that potential conscripts were "over-represented" in the tens of thousands of Russians leaving their homeland earlier this year.
"The day the war started, I got a doctor's diagnosis saying that I'm not ill and therefore I'm not exempt from serving a year in the military," Alexander, a 23-year-old Russian math teacher who is now in Istanbul, Turkey, told the news outlet.
According to the report, ticket prices for destinations like Istanbul and others outside of Russia "spiked" following Putin's mobilization speech Wednesday, with some carries sold out of tickets.
While some neighboring nations are refusing entry to the fleeing conscripts, Germany is signaling that it will take some in, Deutsche Welle reported.
"Deserters threatened with serious repression can, as a rule, obtain international protection in Germany," the publication reported Interior Minister Nancy Faeser saying in an interview with the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Anyone who courageously opposes Putin's regime and thereby falls into great danger, can file for asylum on grounds of political persecution."
According to the report, flights to Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Serbia have sold out completely, and there are long lines at Russia's borders with Georgia, Finland, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, since the mobilization started.
"According to EU law, those who escape a war that violates international law have a right to asylum and protection," the head of the European department of Pro Asyl, Karl Kopp, said in the article. "In this sense, Germany and Europe must now unbureaucratically organize the admission of the people who vote with their feet against the Russian war of aggression."
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