A Yearning for Freedom: How One Russian Deserter Escaped the Army Twice
The biography of former conscript Artem Vovchenko is a ready-made script for an action-packed series. Over the course of his life, he managed to escape the army to avoid fighting in the war with Ukraine, serve time in a deportation prison in the United States, survive deportation back to Russia, and, against all odds, successfully escape again with the help of organizations. RapidUnit Response и «Ark." NeMoscow spoke with Artem about how he managed to navigate this entire journey and ultimately remain free.
Instead of demobilization, a contract
— Tell us who you are and how you joined the army?
I studied at the Saratov State Law Academy (SSLA). It's a four-year undergraduate program. After that, I'm drafted into the army. I was thinking about how to resolve this issue so I could work and do my own thing, since the army takes a year out of my life. I tried to get help through the "No Conscription" organization, thinking they'd help with the medical part. But they ended up deceiving me: they promised to help with the medical certificate, even if I was in good health, but in the end they said, "Well, you don't have any health problems." I had no other options or money, so I had to enlist. I thought, "Okay, I'll serve a year and forget about it." I served for six months in Vladikavkaz, and then I was transferred to a base in the Armenian city of Gyumri.
In Gyumri, a vigorous campaign to persuade conscripts to sign contracts began. They used various methods of pressure. For example, they told us, "Now write reports stating that you might want to sign a contract later. In the meantime, serve and keep an eye on things." We were conscripts, young and afraid, with few rights, so we wrote these reports. We thought it was just a formality and would give us time to think about it. Half the soldiers had no intention of continuing their service; they simply wrote them because they were told to do so.
Finally, three months before demobilization, I found out I was already a contract soldier. I started asking, like, what the hell? Who signed it for me? I hadn't even seen the contract. Show me the contract! But they simply dumped me. I even contacted the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers. My parents—my mother was still alive—wrote appeals that their son had been deceived into becoming a contract soldier and asked for help. They went all the way to the prosecutor's office in Armenia. But the local prosecutor was apparently in cahoots with them. He conducted a formal investigation, and the commanders told him, "He's lying, he signed everything himself." No one asked me anything. That's the system in the army: first they question the commanders, then the soldiers. They, of course, replied that everything was fine, and the matter was closed. No one even spoke to me.
Then I was sent on a mission to the mountains, where it was almost impossible to contact anyone or file complaints. I was stuck there until the end of my service. Then the war with Ukraine began. I realized they were starting to raise the issue of redeployment, that they might send me to help on the Ukrainian front. I was categorically against this war and was shocked by the news. I tried to communicate with the commanders and soldiers, to reason with them, but I was met only with aggression and incomprehension. At some point, I became terrified: I realized that such conversations could simply get me killed.
During this period, my mother became seriously ill; she was diagnosed with cancer. I begged my commanders to let me go to Russia to say goodbye—she was almost in a coma. But she told me there would be time to say goodbye, saying I had leave in three months. I told them I was asking you like a human being, and you were acting like inhuman beings. Thank God, my mother lived until I arrived, but she was already unconscious. She was in such a serious condition that she didn't recognize me.
When my leave ended, I had to return to Armenia. I was completely devastated. I felt like a slave who wouldn't let me go, even though my service had essentially expired. I asked to be discharged from the army so I could be with my dying mother, but they refused again. I realized they didn't even want to talk about it. And then I decided to run away from the unit.
— So, at some point you simply didn’t return to your unit?
— Yes. I simply missed my shift and left Armenia for Georgia. From there, to Indonesia. My parents started getting calls from the unit almost immediately. At first, they said I'd "disappeared," hoping I'd simply gone home to Russia. But I knew that if I returned to Russia, they'd catch me and put me in jail. I flew to Indonesia because I had friends there. I practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu and compete in MMA; I have a strong athletic and coaching background, so I planned to develop there.
Instead of political asylum - prison
— Why did you leave there and how did you end up in the USA?
There's an extradition treaty between Indonesia and Russia. I could be deported very easily. I knew it wouldn't be safe to stay there for long, and legalizing my status there was nearly impossible, as you have to live there for ten years to get a residence permit. And getting citizenship is incredibly difficult. And you constantly have to apply for a visa run. I started looking for countries that could offer real protection from deportation. I decided on the United States. It was far from Russia, and at the time, it seemed like human rights were respected there. But I miscalculated the timing and didn't fully understand how the system worked. I was very unlucky with the immigration prison I ended up in and the judge I ended up with.
— Did you end up in jail immediately after arriving in the US?
I flew to Mexico and crossed the border into the US, like many others. Then you apply for asylum, they give you a document, and you're released until your trial. We could go to friends or sponsors. But right then, the rules tightened: we were thrown into immigration detention. I waited eight months for my trial. I had a lawyer, but the judge wouldn't even listen to my arguments. He said, "I don't believe any of this, like, everything's fake, you made it all up, like, that's it, get out of here." I lost the trial.
— What were the conditions in the immigration prison?
"I hate to complain, but the staff there aren't human beings. They're full-blown nationalists who hate immigrants. They did everything they could to make our lives worse: both in terms of healthcare and basic human interaction. They cut off contact with our families, and a call cost an exorbitant amount of money, somewhere around $70 for five minutes."
I understand that this is a prison, and I told them: "I agree, I made a mistake, but can you be more lenient with us, or maybe help with something?" But you don't expect anything from them except punishment.
The food and housing were appalling. The population was mostly people from India, Africa, and Arab countries. Many were bandits or swindlers. They were constantly stealing. Many had illnesses that no one treated. I twice contracted skin infections from Indians. I asked the administration to relocate me, but they knew they could make my life worse, and that's exactly what they did. There was no talk of relocation; on the contrary, they further isolated me and placed me in the densest group of Indians.
— You said you were punished. How exactly?
—As they could. They put you in solitary confinement. They could do a "purge" and take everything you had. There wasn't much there anyway, but they took everything. They gave you very small portions, and you were constantly hungry. And the break between dinner and breakfast was 14 hours.
And in the canteen, we had to, well, how can I say... steal food, stale bread. And they would come and confiscate this food. And they would even take the last crumbs of stale bread. Well, they weren't human beings, after all.
How did you feel when you found out you were being deported back to Russia?
After losing the court case, I tried to change my deportation destination. Not to Russia, but to some other place. I wrote to various organizations, telling them I had documents for permanent residence in Indonesia and to send me there. But apparently the order was to return me to Russia at any cost. Incidentally, Russian passport holders were treated very poorly there.
— What do you think this is connected with?
"I don't know, maybe it has something to do with politics. Most likely, it does. Maybe it just seemed to me like they were afraid of us and were trying to get even. I had a feeling they thought, and perhaps still think, that Russia is enemy number one, and we're all spies. It's like they've watched too many Hollywood movies and formed that image. Americans, as people, live differently, they have a different perception, a different worldview. And they seem to be stuck in their own paradigm: that we're all like in the movies—"Russians, spies, bandits." And that's how they treated us all, even though they didn't even know us as people. And it was really hard to convince them otherwise, to explain anything. They remained fixated on it.
Out of his own body: How Artem was returned to Russia
— So you were put on a deportation plane, and what happened next?
In Egypt, where I had a connecting flight to Russia, I tried to somehow avoid deportation. I tried to persuade them to let me go, showing them that I had a long-term visa to Indonesia. But they simply grabbed me by force. They shoved me into a car... then onto a plane: they tied my hands and feet and threw me on. They couldn't do anything. I was, of course, in shock... so shocked that, just so you understand, I felt like it wasn't happening to me. It was like I was watching myself from the outside and thinking, "Damn, what's going on?" Like I wasn't in my own body. And it was so emotionally and psychologically difficult that I simply didn't know what to do.
When we arrived at the Moscow airport, we were handed over to the officers, most likely representatives of the special services that work at airports. We were received, placed in a line, and each one was called into an office, one by one. There, they asked questions: "What happened, how were you, where were you, why were you there?" – basically, the standard ones.
— Were you threatened? Beaten?
They threatened me, but fortunately, they didn't beat me. They were generally calm, asking questions quite politely, but, you know, it was the kind of calm where you understand they're hinting at you: that's it, you're finished. It was a kind of calm aggression.
There was no shouting, no direct pressure—nothing like "Ah!"—nothing like that. They're professionals, I think, in this area, and they know what they're doing. From their perspective, they're questioning you intelligently, extracting information from you. I understood they wanted to gather as much dirt on me as possible, to add more charges, so I'd have more charges against them and be completely locked out.
— What exactly did they ask you about?
"I had documents in hand when I was deported, which I wanted to present to the Egyptians, saying, 'I need help, please help me and don't send me to Russia, you can send me to another country.' But in Egypt, when they arrested me, they simply confiscated those documents. And they personally handed them over to the FSB. And they simply read the documents and understood everything. They didn't even ask any questions because they knew I was supposedly an opposition figure in some way or another."
They asked about other Russians who remained in the immigration prison. They were very interested in who, how, what nationalities were there, from what regions of Russia. They asked, "Who have you spoken to?" Maybe they were looking for someone—I don't know who else is still there.
— Where did they take you from the airport?
They handed me over to the military police and took me to a military pretrial detention center—a "collection point"—to await trial. I won't go into details about the conditions there for security reasons.
The back as the only ally
- But you managed to get out of there?
"I had severe back problems. When they twisted me in Egypt, I already had a back problem: I had hernias, one leg was numb, I couldn't stand on it. I limped. But the Egyptians didn't give a damn—they just twisted me, and everything got worse."
And when they brought me to Russia, after the shock had already passed, and I was in pretrial detention, I simply couldn't get out of bed. And I needed to be fit for prison. They needed to treat my back. But they told me right away that those under investigation don't receive any medical care because there are already so many people there who need help. Those who were injured, they don't even care about us.
I paid for my own treatment, scraped together money from whoever I could, and paid for it. I went to a physioneurologist to get better without surgery. Because they wouldn't have allowed me to have surgery; I still have to recover from it, and the trial is in five or six months. In short, it wasn't an option.
I suffered for about three months; I simply couldn't get out of bed; I just walked around limping. When I became more or less mobile, I started thinking about what to do. Because I knew there would be a trial no matter what, and they'd just wipe me out. I'd have a choice: either I go to the SVO, and there the only option is to storm the place, and that's suicide. Or I could serve seven to twelve years. That's how long they'd give me.
And I understood that I was at a point where I had to decide whether my life would fall apart or not, whether I would be able to take charge of it. I was also very depressed. I understood that if I didn't take my life into my own hands now, well, that's it, I was lost. No one cared, no one was going to help me. I turned to everyone, and even my family was afraid to help me because, as you understand, the situation in Russia. And they were even afraid to talk to me. It was very difficult emotionally—when everyone abandoned you.
I had a plus, I had access to a phone: I looked online to see what was going on, what the situation was, how people were leaving Russia in such difficult situations, what escape routes there were. I roughly sketched out one possibility. And I thought, "Sink or swim, I'll give it a try. If it doesn't work out, okay, I have nothing to lose anyway; my life is over anyway if I don't do something."
And I just tried. And God was with me, the Lord helped, and everything turned out well. There were moments there that were almost miraculous, because I didn't know how to describe it, as if everything was in my favor. I believe that everything will be alright. I pray every day and give thanks for both the difficulties and the joys.
What I mean is that anything is possible if you believe. God will always help. Our lives are very short, time flies very quickly – that's a fact.
In organizations, RapidUnit Response The people I contacted, including "Kovcheg," said I needed to leave Russia myself, and then they'd help me. I wasn't being treated in a hospital, but at a civilian clinic in the city. So I found a time when I could sneak out and get to a certain location. From there, I could hitchhike to Belarus, where I was planning to fly out.
— Did you have documents with you? How did you leave Belarus?
I myself didn't understand why they didn't take my passport. Apparently there was a regulatory issue, or they simply forgot. As soon as I realized this, I hid it. I told everyone I'd lost my documents back in America, in immigration detention. I even managed to hide and format my phone. When they asked me, "Why have you deleted everything, where are your apps, why did you deliberately delete it to hide something from us?"
I answered, “No, when they put me in detention, I also deleted everything before this transfer so that they wouldn’t find anything on my phone, and I didn’t do this for you, in short.”
When asked where he is now, Artem Vovchenko He did not speak for security reasons, but the human rights activist agrees that his entire story is true. Denis Dzhenzhera, who is now helping him. He believes Artem had a second opportunity to escape the clutches of the Russian state and is amazed by his desire for freedom.
"I'd like to begin my commentary with the following: Artyom's thirst for freedom is astounding! It's astounding how he flees from anywhere he can. Overall, the whole story is verifiable, and the Farewell to Arms Foundation has confirmed this possibility. He could have been placed in..." under supervision The command of a military unit—the so-called unit commander's observation. This preventive measure normally requires the suspect's consent, but during mobilization or martial law, it can be applied without it and ordered by the investigator without a trial.
He was placed in the military commandant's office, essentially a temporary detention facility for military personnel. They were then transferred to a unit he calls a "military pretrial detention center." Now, due to the large number of deserters and criminal cases under this article, it's simply impossible to house everyone in real pretrial detention centers—they would become overcrowded. Therefore, this practice of temporary detention under the supervision of command is used.
There was no escort as such, but there were military escorts during transport and examinations. A unit representative could also have been assigned to him. He was released from supervision because the hospital didn't have the specialist needed for his condition, and he was allowed to seek treatment at a private clinic at his own expense. This effectively gave him the opportunity to travel unaccompanied. As for his documents, the military police were not required to confiscate them. Importantly, he managed to keep his passport despite all this. Although many in such situations retain their documents.
And when he realized that trips to a private clinic effectively left him without constant supervision, he took advantage of the situation and fled.
