Cars have also lined Russia’s borders with Finland and Kazakhstan since last week, when Putin announced the call-up of hundreds of thousands of reservists to fight the Kremlin’s faltering war in Ukraine. Mark the first in Russia military mobilization since World War II.
Shortly after the speech, tickets sold out in the few cities that still have direct flights from Russia, and Google searches surged for queries like “how to get out of Russia.”
Confusion over who might be called up has also pushed thousands to flee, along with fears that Russia’s borders could be closed to men of military age.
They don’t have many options if they don’t want to deploy in Ukraine. Russian flights in EU airspace are banned and the Baltic nations have closed their land borders. In recent days, piles of abandoned bicycles near border posts have appeared in images on social networks.
The Russian news agency TASS said more than 5,000 cars waited for hours at the border with Georgia on Tuesday.
In Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said Tuesday his country would talk to Moscow about the influx and sought to “maintain agreement with neighboring countries.” He called it a “difficult situation” but said there was no reason to panic after tens of thousands of crossings by Russian citizens were reported in recent days.
Finnish authorities said they saw a nearly 80 percent increase in entries from Russia after the mobilization, but the Finnish Border Guard Also he said on Tuesday that “the majority of arrivals move to other countries.”
The Kremlin has described reports of an exodus as exaggerated, despite growing signs of a backlash to the mobilization.
Riot police have arrested hundreds of protesters as rights groups fear the order disproportionately detains men in remote or impoverished parts of the country. And at a recruiting station in the Irkutsk regiona man shot and wounded a military recruiter on Monday.
Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report.