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A Russian man who didn’t want to answer Putin’s call to arms and join
his country’s war against Ukraine has been living alone deep in the
middle of the woods for almost four months.
Adam Kalinin (alias) was against the war in Ukraine from the very
beginning. He was actually arrested for two weeks and fined for
displaying a banner that read “No to war” on the outside of his
apartment building. But when Vladimir Putin signed a mobilization order
calling roughly 300,000 Russian men to war against Ukraine, Kalinin knew
he needed to find a way to avoid being sent to the front line. Financial
issues, his friends, and the general idea of leaving his homeland
prevented the young IT specialist from running to another country, so he
did the next best thing he could think of – kissed his wife goodbye and
hid in the middle of a freezing forest. He’s been living there for
almost four months.
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“Leaving would have been a difficult step out of my comfort zone,” the
thirty-something man recently told the BBC. “It isn’t exactly
comfortable here either but nevertheless, psychologically, it would be
really hard to leave.”
The way Adam sees it, living off the grid is the best way to avoid
Putin’s mobilization. If the authorities can’t find him to hand him the
order in person, he can’t legally be called to join the war. He lives in
a tent enduring temperatures as low as -11 degrees Celsius and survives
on supplies regularly brought by his wife.
“If they are physically unable to take me by the hands and lead me to
the enlistment office, that is a 99% defense against mobilization or
other harassment,” Kalinin said.
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Thanks to a long-range antenna tied to a pine tree, the IT specialist
has an internet connection and can carry out his job almost as he did
before moving into the woods, although he doesn’t have enough solar
power to work full days.
Adam Kalinin’s wife helps him survive, regularly bringing him food
supplies to a drop-off point where they are able to briefly see each
other, and he then takes them to a safe place that he visits whenever he
needs to stock up. As a lover of the outdoors, he had all the equipment
needed to survive in the wild, but it would be tough for him to live the
way he does without his wife’s help.
IT workers are currently exempt from military conscription, and Adam
himself has not yet received his mobilization order, but he doesn’t want
to risk it, especially since there are reports that the exemption has so
far been ignored multiple times.
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“We have a totalitarian state that has become so powerful,” Kalinin
bemoaned. “In the last six months, laws have been brought in at an
incredible pace. If a person speaks out now against the war, the state
will pursue them.”
Adam, who describes himself as an introvert, says he doesn’t miss human
interaction that much, although he does miss his wife and would like to
spend more time with her. But, in the current situation, things are as
good as they can be. One thing he realized since becoming a hermit is
that the things that he care about before have faded into the background
now.
“The things that seemed important before don’t have their power anymore.
There are people in a much worse situation than us,” he said.
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