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From our special correspondent in Jerusalem – Ilia fled his native Russia because he wanted no part in its invasion of Ukraine. Now an Israeli citizen, he tells FRANCE 24 about his experience of fleeing one war and landing in another.
Ilia, 25, left his home and family behind to avoid the war in Ukraine. But war has caught up with him in his adoptive home of Israel.
Like many Russians, the young Muscovite chose to leave his country in May 2022, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, fearing he would be called up to serve.
“I chose to live,” he says simply, seated on a park bench in his new home of Jerusalem.
Ilia, from a family of Ashkenazi Jews, says he refused to close his eyes to the injustice of Russia’s war. He couldn’t bear the thought of one day being drafted to fight in Ukraine.
“I couldn’t stay behind. I felt uncomfortable with the letter ‘Z’, the symbol of war that I saw plastered everywhere, including on buses,” he explains, referring to the pro-war propaganda motif used by the Russian government and its supporters.
“Russia always takes the wrong path,” he says. “Every 10 or 20 years it embarks on wars of aggression that it seeks to pass off as just. It’s exhausting.”
Ilia says he became politically conscious as a teenager. In 2019 he volunteered to work at a foundation set up by Alexei Navalny, a leading opponent to President Vladimir Putin who is now serving multiple jail terms in Russia.
Navalny was arrested in 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he had been treated for a suspected poison attack. In the following days, Ilia was himself arrested and…
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Source : france24
