Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday denied reports that up to 700,000 Russians have fled the country to avoid Vladimir Putin’s military mobilization for the war in Ukraine. Peskov admitted there have been some hasty defections, but insisted the number was much lower.
“I don’t think those numbers should be taken seriously. I don’t have exact figures, but of course they are far from what’s being claimed there,” Peskov told reporters.
The 700,000 figure was given to Forbes Russia on Tuesday by “a source familiar with the Kremlin’s estimates.”
The source said about 200,000 of the fleeing Russian military-age males went to Kazakhstan. A second Kremlin source confirmed the number as “600,000 to 700,000,” and said the Russian government currently prefers to regard them as “tourists” on exceptionally long vacations.
Finnish border guard speak with Russian men at the Vaalimaa border check point between Finland and Russia in Virolahti, Finland, Friday, September 30, 2022. The Finnish-Russia border was closed Friday after the Nordic country announced it would ban Russians with tourist visas from entering, curtailing one of the last easily accessible routes to Europe for Russians trying to flee a military mobilization. (Sasu Makinen./Lehtikuva via AP)
Kazakhstan’s Interior Minister Marat Akhmetzhanov said on Tuesday that 200,000 Russians have entered his country since September 21. He added that about 147,000 Russians left Kazakhstan during the same period, but he did not know where they went.
Other Kazakh officials said many of the fleeing Russians quickly moved on to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, while about 70,000 of them applied for personal identification numbers and work documents that would allow them to remain in Kazakhstan.
Akhmetzhanov said the flow of Russians decreased considerably over the weekend because Russian officials set up mobile conscription stations at their border checkpoints.
Other regional media sources quoted by Forbes Russia said 66,000 Russians fled into the European Union through checkpoints in Finland and Estonia, and 53,000 sought refuge in Georgia.
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