If you want to see how much the Russian people disapprove of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist “holy war” against Ukraine, look no further than Gambell, Alaska, a remote village on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, to which two Russian men fled on a small boat across choppy, ice-filled seas seeking political asylum to avoid conscription.
This is the length to which these men and hundreds of thousands of others have gone to avoid participating in one of the 21st century’s most heinous atrocities. It may not be apparent when looking at opinion polls in a society built on fear, but many people in Russia see this war for what it really is: an outrageous land grab.
The Russian people might be unable to remove their autocratic head of state from power through democratic means, but many have chosen to vote with their feet and extricate themselves from the clutches of the bear’s paw. Let’s hope the Kremlin doesn’t claw them back.