KYIV, Ukraine — The Kremlin has sent even more forces to bolster its faltering war effort, but the units are heading not to Ukraine but to Russia’s borders with other countries, where on Tuesday they clashed with young Russian men trying to join an exodus from the country.
As opportunities for Russians to escape a draft order issued last week narrowed, the Federal Security Service dispatched armored vehicles to the borders, where some men waiting to flee were given military draft papers, state media reported.
The border rush began hours after President Vladimir V. Putin announced a military appeal last week affecting hundreds of thousands of Russians, and the flow has only grown since then. Although the Kremlin has dismissed reports that it may soon ban nearly all men of military age from leaving the country, many Russians weren’t taking any chances.
On Tuesday, at the borders of Georgia, Kazakhstan or even Mongolia, their number continued to grow, sometimes raising tensions.
In Kazakhstan, responding to calls to close the 4,600-mile border with Russia, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev urged “humanity, patience and organization”, saying the Russians had been “forced to leave because of the current desperate situation”.
With cars lined up for miles at its border and waits of more than 48 hours, Georgia said it would allow visitors to enter on foot. The number of people seeking entry has nearly doubled in the past week, to around 10,000 a day, the country’s interior minister said.
Forces from Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the KGB, have been deployed at border crossings to ensure reservists do not leave the country “without completing border formalities”, the service said. in a press release.
Tensions were also high on Tuesday in Europe, where some officials pointed the finger at Moscow after the discovery of suspicious leaks in two gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Amid concerns about possible sabotage, Sweden’s National Seismic Network said it detected two large underwater explosions near the locations of the leaks on Monday, and three countries were investigating.
With little mystery surrounding the purported outcome of the vote, conducted under armed guard, the only question that remained unanswered at the end of the day was precisely when the Russian government would announce that it was formally annexing the four eastern and southern territories. southern Ukraine.
The organized votes were mock exercises in democracy, rights groups and Western officials said.
For four days, Ukrainians were alternately cajoled and intimidated into voting in Kremlin-organized referendums. Russian authorities and their proxies in Ukraine have mixed crude intimidation tactics — including placing gunmen wearing ski masks at polling stations — with Orwellian messages and a few stabbings at festivities, including hardly attended concerts in the central squares.
“They knock loudly, they ring the doorbell, they give people a ballot and point with their guns where to put the mark,” Dmytro Orlov, the exiled mayor of the occupied city of Melitopol, said in an interview.
The referendums drew widespread international condemnation, and world leaders vowed not to recognize the supposed results. But that didn’t stop Moscow from announcing them.
On Tuesday evening, Russian state media reported what they described as results showing huge support for Russian membership. Tass, the Russian news agency, reported 92.68% support for Zaporizhzhia, 86% for Kherson in the south, 93.95% for Donetsk and 98.53% for Luhansk, both in the east.
Ukrainian and Western officials say Russia is likely to use the referendums to concoct another pretext for war, more than seven months after the full-scale invasion began.
In the days ahead, as Ukrainian forces continue their battle to reclaim land seized by Russian forces to the east and south, Moscow is expected to assert that Ukraine is attacking Russia, not the other way around – and that She will defend herself by all means. .
On Tuesday, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president who is now deputy chairman of the country’s security council, reiterated on Telegram that Moscow has the right to defend itself with nuclear weapons, and said it was not “certainly not a bluff”.
For all the flimsy, sometimes absurd theater of the referendums, the security implications for Europe were deadly serious, and Ukrainians were nervously considering how far Mr. Putin might go.
“The mood is confident,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in an interview. “They believe in the military. But everyone is talking about nuclear. They are worried.”
Formal annexation would require a vote in the Russian parliament. Mr Putin is due to address both his Houses on Friday, suggesting that a possible vote on annexation could then take place, the British military intelligence agency reported.
Ukrainians have expressed fear that one of the immediate consequences of annexation will be conscription into the Russian army, forcing those in the occupied territories to take up arms against their own country. In parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, which have been controlled by Russia and its proxies since 2014, this is already the case.
After facing heavy casualties for months, Russia may need all the help it can get to support its war efforts.
Western officials estimate that as many as 80,000 Russian troops have been killed or injured in the war, and in recent weeks Russian forces have been driven out of territory they seized earlier in the fighting.
Faced with the losses, Mr Putin, after long resisting broad conscription, last week ordered a “partial mobilization”, calling on 300,000 people to join the fight. The order was described as only applying to people with military experience, but across Russia – and especially in remote areas and among ethnic minority groups – there have been numerous reports of people with no experience swept away.
As many Russians headed for the borders, others took to the streets despite the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent. The chaotic call sparked a wave of discontent, with protests in more than 50 cities, according to independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. More than 2,300 people were detained under anti-protest laws last week, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests in Russia.
Still others have tried to sabotage. Military registration and enlistment offices suffered 21 arson attacks during the same period, according to the newspaper. In Siberia on Monday, a recruiting agent was seriously injured by a gunman who was apparently upset by the mobilization.
Leaders of some European countries, already struggling to accommodate historic numbers of refugees fleeing the war from Russia, have debated how to approach all the young men now fleeing Russia itself.
Russian citizens have fled to the European Union in droves since the military call, the EU border agency said on Tuesday. From September 19 to 25, nearly 66,000 Russian citizens entered EU countries, up 30 percent from the previous week, the agency said in a statement.
Some Russians may be welcomed by a Central Asian neighbor, Mongolia. A former president of Mongolia, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, has called on Buryats, an ethnic Russian minority, to flee there to avoid mobilization.
“Don’t shoot Ukrainians,” he said in a video-recorded speech in English. “Don’t shoot your sisters and brothers, your children and your elders.”
Melissa Eddy and victoria kim contributed report.