YEREVAN, ARMENIA – Egor* was not going to wait for the Russian state to come for him. However, it wasn’t until his plane touched down at Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan, 24 hours after he resigned from his surveillance job with the St Petersburg police force, that he felt some level of safety.
The 31-year-old had already been turned away at the border with Georgia, and Armenia was his last shot at escaping after taking part in anti-Kremlin protests.
“I was afraid because [police] could quickly find me and I would have problems. It made me feel like I was a coward,” he tells The i Paper.
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Four years have now passed since his grandmother – who vividly recalled the horrors of the Second World War – urged him to flee from another conflict. “Leave, there is no need to fight,” he remembered her telling him in April 2022, weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
