Knocks rattled on his apartment door one day last fall, and Maksim peered through the peephole to see two soldiers. I knew they were military recruiting officersexpanding into Russia’s remote Far East the vast conscription effort for the war in the Ukraine.
The 44-year-old fisherman remained silent until the officers left. Knowing that they would return, Maksim went that night to the house of a friend, Sergei, who had received his own unwanted visit. They pored over maps on Sergei’s kitchen table, trying to find a way to flee the Country and a war in which thousands of Russian men were dying. Sergei offered a plan that, at first, seemed unfathomable. “I propose that we travel by sea,” said Sergei.
The idea was the beginning of a daring voyage in a small fishing boat with a 60-horsepower engine to travel hundreds of kilometers over the course of several days—dodging Russian border guards and across the treacherous Bering Sea—to obtain asylum on the shores of the United States. It was a desperate search for freedom, and one that didn’t go as planned.
For months thousands of Russian men have been fleeing the country. Some flew to Latin America and then north, with more than 35,000 Russians arriving last year to seek asylum at US borders. Maksim and Sergei, who asked that their last names not be published to protect their families, did not have the money for such a trip, nor did they have much support. In the town of Egvekinot, between the mountains and the Bering Sea on the edge of the Arctic Circle, almost everyone seemed to support President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
With the help of VPNs that allowed them to find news beyond nationalist propaganda, Sergei and Maksim had come to reject the Kremlin’s narrative of the war. They would not willingly join what they saw as an unwarranted invasion, launched by a government they opposed.
But Maksim wasn’t sure he could survive a trip to mainland Alaska. While examining the maps, they saw St. Lawrence Island, part of Alaska, in the middle of the Bering Sea.
“We can do that,” Maksim agreed.
He had a boat, almost 16 feet long, perfect for fishing in the calm waters of Kresta Bay. This voyage would take them some 300 miles along the Russian coast, and then they would head out into rough seas. For a Monday in September, they had a plan to leave at the end of the week, as soon as the weather cleared. They bought several hundred liters of fuel, filling drums.
They gathered clothing and camping gear, coffee, and cigarettes. They packed water, chicken, eggs, sausages, bread, and potatoes. They loaded up their GPS unit and phones to help navigate the route. Maksim’s parents and siblings were on vacation and, hoping to keep his escape a secret, he opted not to share his plans with them. Sergei, 51, would be leaving behind a transport business. In another part of Russia were his mother and his two daughters.
By Thursday, the men gathered on the shoreline. They told their friends they were going “fishing” and set sail.
The first stretch of the route was familiar, just a couple of hours across the bay to Konergino, where Maksim was born and where they could stay with their friends.
After spending the night, they set out again in the morning, following the coast to the east for more than 100 miles. But the boat’s engine would die every couple of hours, forcing them to fix the problem and adjust the fuel lines, raising concern.
They arrived at the community of Enmelen at 5:00 p.m. and rented rooms. But a storm came in. When they woke up the next morning, the sea was still too rough. The same the next day.
The storm finally passed, and the men set out once more. The sea was much rougher, but they were also worried about the towns on the eastern tip of the Chukchi Peninsula, where many Russian border guards were stationed. The men had put their cell phones on airplane mode, hoping not to be tracked. They kept their satellite phone turned off. Approaching more populated areas, they veered into deeper water, hoping that staying 2 kilometers out to sea would be enough. With the setting of the sun, they began to look for a place where they could run their boat aground. They found a cove, dropped anchor and tied themselves to a rock. There, they discovered an abandoned shack. They set up a tent inside.
The next morning, Maksim scrambled up a hillside with a pair of binoculars to look for border patrols and assess whether the weather was clear enough to continue the most difficult part of the journey: crossing the Bering Sea.
He returned to the camp. “The sea is calm,” she said.
They cooked some chicken, made tea, and set off, using their GPS unit to point them toward St. Lawrence Island.
They had about 80 kilometers to go, seeing how an orca followed them during part of the journey. Then the waves began to rise again, throwing the boat into the waves. The crests of the waves broke over the hull, drenching them.
So, at the peak of one of the waves, Sergei stood up and shouted: “The island!”
The island was bathed in the orange glow of sunset. Villagers on all-terrain vehicles had seen them and were heading to the shore. Maksim put the boat to full throttle, then cut the engine upon reaching US soil.
Getting off the boat, the men opened translation apps on their phones and wrote a message for those who came to meet them: “We don’t want war. We want political asylum.”
Word spread through the Gambell, Alaska community, home to about 600 people. The men told the growing crowd about their journey and their desire for freedom, and people spoke of the generational links of indigenous communities that span the Bering Sea, such as with the Chukchi people, to whom Maksim belongs.
The next day, the world of borders returned. To their surprise, US immigration officers arrived from the mainland and took Sergei and Maksim to what would be three months of immigration detention in Tacoma, Washington.
As soon as the two men were released last month, they began to communicate with family and friends to let them know: they were alive. They had fled from Russia. They were safe in America—for now.
Like most Russians who have begun to arrive in the United States, they have received no guarantees that they will be able to stay. Asylum claims can take a year or more to process. Winning them means being able to prove the threat they faced in Russia, something their lawyers in the United States are confident about.
Meanwhile, they have tried to see what a new life in the US might mean. They enrolled in English classes, and Sergei is looking into the possibility of a new business venture. Maksim has started talking about going back to Alaska to get back the boat he left there, the one that saved them.
By: MIKE BAKER
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/us/russian-asylum-boat-alaska.html, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-02-02 22:10:05
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