Since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Vladimir Putin has faced persistent opposition not only in Western capitals but also inside his own country. For Russians though, criticising the president comes at a cost – one Salavat Abylkalikov knows all too well.
Abylkalikov, 38, a former professor at one of Russia’s most prestigious universities, says he was compelled to flee Moscow last year to escape being conscripted to fight in the Ukraine war, and protect his wife and daughter from harm and separation.
The war, which is closing in on three years, has not only killed hundreds of thousands of Ukranians and Russians, it has also made an estimated 6 million people refugees.
In the case of Russia in particular, it has caused the biggest brain drain since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, says Abylkalikov, who now lives in exile in the UK.
Abylkalikov is one of 400 academics from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine who, since the start of the war, have fled or sought help to leave from the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara), a British charity that assists foreign scholars looking to escape dangerous places or situations.
Nearly 300 of the academics are from Ukraine, making it the highest number of requests for support from scholars in a European country since the 1930s.
Speaking to The Independent from his new home in England, Abylkalikov recalls escaping the clutches of police trying to round up men for conscription.
“When mobilisation started in Russia, I was actively teaching. But every day when I went to the university, I was afraid that they would catch me. There were no rules of exception for the science and academic community. So in the centre of Moscow, as I was approaching a metro station, I could see police waiting to catch hold of men like me,” he tells The Independent.
“For a scholar opposing the war,” the professor recalls, “I faced serious risks, including potential criminal prosecution, dismissal from work, and possible attempts at forced conscription into the war against Ukraine.”
He says he became increasingly uncomfortable with the “atmosphere” at his university, where some people openly backed the war. At home, his wife grew more stressed by the day.
After four years of marriage, Abylkalikov and his wife were expecting their first child in December 2022, just after Putin mobilised military reservists, widening the pool of men to fight in the war.
“In Russia, there have been documented cases of children being separated from parents because of their anti-war and opposition activities,” Abylkalikov says, adding that he didn’t want such a fate to befall his family.
For him and his wife, he says, life in Moscow became hell. As he continued telling students that war was not good for Russia – and many, he says, understood this — the university appointed a Putin loyalist named Sergey Karaganov as the dean of his department. Karaganov openly backed the war and argued that Moscow could attack a Nato nation.
Just before he left Moscow in the summer of 2023, a student at the university became a casualty of war, a life cut short by Putin’s so-called “special military operation”.
