When they closed every corridor to the West, in Mariupol, Nikita had three choices. One: sitting in a basement starving to death, waiting to die under the rubble. Two: try to escape to Ukraine and be killed by Russian soldiers. Three: get on “the freedom bus”, as his father and the other pro-Russians called him. Asking “voluntarily” of being deported to a filtration camp. First in Donbass, then in Russia, to start a new life as a Russian. “You have fifteen minutes to get ready, then we’ll come and get you,” was the threat from Putin’s soldiers. “If you want to stay in the world, you better not make a mess.”
It was March 21 last. The martyr city of Mariupol was under a hellish attack from the air and from the ground, water and food were becoming scarce, there was no electricity and heating, they drank the melted snow collected from the wells. “I lived in a neighborhood where it was no longer possible to evacuate – explains the 18-year-old -. The only option was to hand over my fate to the military of the Donetsk People’s Republic. I’m young, I don’t want to die now ». Thus, he lined up among hundreds of pleading people “who wanted to save themselves”.
Surrender to the enemy, to escape execution. “We will take you away from this land of Nazis, we will take you to the brothers in Russia”, the volunteers of the DNR warned him, and it did not sound like a promise. For this newly graduated boy, checkered shirt and white T-shirt underneath, ear-length hair and a young movie actor’s face, the journey he was about to begin was a leap in the dark and had the look of a prison he wouldn’t be from. never managed to get out again. “When they came down to pick us up in the bunker, they selected us. Then, we were taken to a village near Donetsk, from there after a few days they took us to the capital of the region. They piled us on the beds in a school. We stayed there for a week ». He was with his father and the new partner of the man: «I could not oppose him, because I would have been in trouble – Nikita says -. I always said yes and my heart died. Dad and I have very different ideas, for him Ukraine does not exist, he always wanted to live under Putin. He thinks what the Russians are doing is right. ‘ The same ideology shared by those in charge of the preparations to “filter out” the Ukrainian refugees who had agreed to convert. “They queued us up. Shut up. A military platoon stood in front of us. They were cold, indifferent, ”he says. “We went through the checks one by one: registration of documents, photos, fingerprints, then the moment came when they undressed us, down to our underwear.” Even women and children? “No, only men aged 18 to 60 – he adds, has a petrified look -. They questioned us, they wanted to know if we had links with the Ukrainian army. I escaped it because I have no tattoos, they were looking for those, they turned us around violently, even if they didn’t beat us ».
In the cold room, from time to time, an executive would appear. She took forty people and took them away. She “she sat them down and explained the next procedure,” that is, what happened to all of them. When Nikita’s turn came, the bus filled up quickly. “There I decided to part with my father,” he explains, full of resentment. “Only upon arrival did I discover that we had been deported to Taganrog, Russia. They welcomed us into a new filtration field. They said we were lucky people and that a quick re-education was waiting for us, then a better life ». Here too, two “options” presented themselves, but it was clear that the choice, between threats and pushed propaganda, could only be one. Except risking it all, like Nikita did. «They have registered us again – explains the young man -. We were advised against going to Europe, because it is very bad there. In Russia, the government would have granted us three or four months free in a hotel, plus the financial support of 10 thousand rubles once. Only: we could not decide the city to be transported to ».
The trains left once a day: destination Siberia, Urals, in the countryside. Only recently has an urban center been added, Vladivostok. “Virtually everyone who was with me decided to stay. But not me. I wanted to escape and I couldn’t tell anyone ».
And so, Nikita chose option “B”: “Go my own way, at my own risk,” the directors of the Russian identification center told him. “I spent days of fear every minute – he explains – that they would catch me and kill me. I reached out to a friend in Moscow, then we made contact with an association that explained the escape plan to us via Telegram. It was impossible to meet them, too dangerous ». Among Putin’s jerseys, the opposition is underground and hiding, but it works tirelessly to help the Ukrainians escape towards the European borders, and then re-enter the country from the West. They are Russian volunteers, who have set up transcontinental networks, coordinated with “Mariupol’s friends” in Estonia, then in Germany. They instructed him and his friend on checkpointsint to pass, only after having thoroughly cleaned the phone of every photo and number that was minimally suspicious. Nikita was a Ukrainian refugee, yes. But he had to erase the traces of his previous life, every message, every support for Kiev. “I cleaned everything up and left with my stomach pounding in my throat,” he recalls. Between car rides and trains, they arrived at the border with Estonia: «The advice was not to talk to the Russian soldiers, not to contradict them in anything, to do everything they said without ever looking them in the eye». Another humiliation: as a sample, someone was stripped.
“When we crossed the border, we screamed for joy,” Nikita says. She spent the first month in Tallin, at the home of the volunteers. Then he left for Hamburg, from where he retraces with us the escape that he would never have believed possible. «Since June 1st they pay me 450 euros a month, plus food. I live in a hotel with other Ukrainians. I’ll start my German course soon. ” He no longer feels fear, Nikita. “I’m safe now. The only nightmare – he says – is that Putin goes mad even more and throws the atomic bomb“.
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