Dear Readers:
Continuing (and concluding) this story from STRANA. Most of which consists of an interview with an anonymous group of men, a few of the lucky ones who managed to escape from Ukraine into Romania, by trekking through the Carpathian mountains. These young men give the readers very good advice about what to pack, how kind of clothes and shoes to wear, how to plan for the trip, etc., but the brilliant simplicity of their plan goes beyond just hiking advice.
When I first started reading this piece, I was wondering if these guys had actually thought it all the way through: Assuming they can overcome all the obstacles and make it into Romania, what happens after that? Where will they live? You can’t register at any hotel in Europe without showing your passport. Where can they find a job? How will they survive? Won’t they just be snagged again and sent back home by Romanian police? It was only when I read all the way to the end that I understood. So I am going to sort of give away the ending here, just so you understand how carefully these clever “Refuseniks” thought this whole thing through.
See, after the “surprise” Russian invasion, all of the EU countries opened their arms, their hearts, and their wallets, to Ukrainian refugees. There was a wave of outrage and emotion that swept all rational considerations aside. Every Ukrainian was considered an angel, fleeing from the Russian demons. Any Ukrainian would be assured of a warm welcome and an immediate offer of assistance, housing, the works. Despite the passage of time, despite the new mobilization laws within Ukraine, it seems that the European bureaucracies, stuck in inertia, have not changed this basic approach towards Ukrainians crossing the border. Ukrainians are still officially greeted as beloved guests. And this is what the newer waves of Refuseniks are counting on!
I shall give away a major plot point: This particular group, which STRANA interviews, made a strategic decision right from the start: To leave their passports and money behind. I am sure that this was a difficult, much debated, torturous decision, but they made it based, presumably, on knowledge passed down from previous groups of travelers. They planned it so that when they entered the Romanian border, they would be practically destitute, literally undocumented refugees without a hryvna to their name; and they counted on the Romanians to snap to attention and love them, simply because they are Ukrainians. SPOILER ALERT: It worked. But we will see this in more detail, below.
Many people, when planning this trip, choose the usual tourist hiking paths through the mountains. These paths are simple, easy, and relatively short. This route would normally take three days and two nights. But these are also the routes that are well-guarded, so there is an increased likelihood of coming across a border patrol.
Another group of successful travelers interviewed mentioned huge swaths of forests that had been chopped down. These bare patches are routinely patrolled by quadrocopter drones and must be avoided: “The majority of those men who were caught, it’s because they made a huge mistake. Once they made it all the way to the buffer zone on the border, they thought there would not be any Ukrainian border patrols. But that’s not true. The exact opposite is true: This border zone is the most closely guarded of all.
“Another mistake is to hike along the forest roads because it’s so much easier. These roads and paths are not as bumpy, so you don’t get as tired. Also, people are scared of getting lost, so they tend to stick to the paths. And this is where they get caught. The roads in the forest are maintained fairly well, so if somebody spots you, say a few hundred meters away, then they will come at you and hunt you down. The border guards are equipped with drones and television, they also have off-road 4×4 vehicles, and they will also set the dogs on you. For these reasons you need to pick the worst, and most grown-over paths. Sometimes these paths are so hard, you basically have to crawl through them. But this is how we did it, and this is why we were able to get through unnoticed. There were so many times that longed to switch to a regular road, but we knew that we would get caught if we did.”
These travelers would spend the night under fallen trees, in order to remain invisible to the drones. “At night people might be sound asleep in their sleeping bags, thinking they are invisible, and that’s when they are snagged, because they are spotted by drones. That’s why we would dig holes under fallen trees and crawl into the holes to become invisible, as we slept in our sleeping bags.” This particular traveler was lucky, because the weather cooperated: It was sunny and warm. “On the other hand, we had to exert more of an effort to hide. The weather can change very quickly in the Carpathians, so you have to be prepared for anything. On certain peaks we encountered snow, our shoes got soaked through, and our feet froze.”
This particular group of refugees, during their trip, encountered a young lad from Kharkov who was also, like they, trying to escape to Romania. “At first we thought he was a soldier. We secretly observed him for 15-20 minutes, trying to figure out how to evade him. But then we noticed that he was wearing summer sneakers, which told us he was no soldier. We approached him with the following words: Citizen Draft Dodger, what do you think you are doing here?” The lad got scared. But then we laughed and reassured him that we were also draft dodgers, just like him. He was traveling alone, and was completely unprepared for such a trip. His feet were soaked through and through, he didn’t have a change of footwear, so he got frozen very quickly and had decided to turn back and go home. We chatted with him for about 15 minutes, but then we had to leave him and keep on going, because we had a strict timetable: We needed to get to the border by Sunday morning. We don’t know what became of that kid.”
When it came to sleeping, the group had to make do with 4-5 hours per night. “The thought that we could be captured at any minute, deprived us of the ability to rest. The constant stress and the physical fatigue continued to build up within us. There were times when we thought of just giving up, but then we would find some strength within us, and we kept on going.”
Crossing The Border
As explained above, the goal of the travelers was eventually to encounter a Romanian patrol and be greeted as refugees. They knew there was a definite risk involved, but they had no other options except to assume this risk.
“From the Romanian side they have also chopped down a lot of trees, which makes it hard to find cover. Our own [Ukrainian] border patrols have been known to penetrate one or two kilometers into Romania, when in hot pursuit of draft dodgers. We were warned about that. We were also warned that the Romanian border patrols might just silently hand us over to their Ukrainian colleagues. However, once we actually crossed the border, there was nobody there to greet us. We noticed some tracks probably left by other Ukrainian Refuseniks. Once we were about 3 kilometers inside Romanian territory, past the buffer zone, then we encountered some lumberjacks from Ukraine. They led us to the nearest Romanian border guards.
“The border guards were polite, but they lectured us about making such a risky trip. Many people do not survive this trek, especially in the winter. The flow of refugees is very big. Those border guards who received us told us they, just their little group, typically take in up to 20 Ukrainians per day. When they detained us, they took away our knives and walking sticks, and led us to a refugee camp, where they started the process of documenting us. We were offered the opportunity to apply for government subsidies, but we turned that down.”
These travelers, having successfully accomplished what they needed to do, in what we now know is only the first stage of their adventure, concluded: “Currently we are just waiting for our relatives to send us our passports and some money. After which, we will head off to those countries where we actually want to go.” Here is the part where they explained how they had left their passports and money behind in Ukraine, having heard horrific stories of border guards confiscating everything. And this risky decision turned out to be the right one for them.
In conclusion: This happy group of travelers had a detailed and well thought-out escape plan, they carried it out quite well, some luck was on their side, they suffered and endured, but in the end, they accomplished what they set out to do. Soon they will have money and passports, then they will head off to the country of their dreams, which is definitely not Romania. They don’t say which is the promised land, but obviously somewhere further West. I wish them well, and may Fortune continue to be their guide.
Awful Avalanche 
Just 3 days to a week of hiking to escape death or mutilation, fighting for the interests of NATO?
Considering I hiked often for much longer, just for the fun of it (I really liked walking and hiking, better than a road trip, just having to rely on yourself and what you have in your packsack): Not a bad trade off.
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PS: I actually learned to like long distance hiking when I spent two years in the Bundeswehr, a long time ago, when the leopards were still young and drones just was a new word to be learned.
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I don’t mind hiking if the weather is nice and cool. I just can’t tolerate heat!
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Oddly, I do not consider non-Nazi-types escaping the sacrificial alter erected by DC/London’s dark-priests “draft-dodgers”, no, that title belongs to those healthy Nazi types guarding the goosestepan-goons “iron-curtain” of borders.
Forcing a man to put on a uniform and shipping him off to the front with no training is no different than what Nazi did at their death-camps showers. To go to the Russian-front* with no training is suicide, not military service.
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*Yesterday, I put up a photo of a well known ’60’s comedy show to mock the 3LA’s concocted cover story for their act of war/terrorism, blowing-up Nord-Stream 1 & 2. In mentioning the “Russian-Front” today I am reminded of another 60’s TV Comedy show* that acknowledged the job the Russians did on the Nazis on the “Russian-Front”. During the first Cold-War, we, Americans still credited Russia for helping defeat the Nazis. Back then, fifty years ago WW II veterans were still alive, history could not yet be re-written. The Orwellian version of WW II we have today came after the 1980’s, it had to wait until those who fought in “the war” were dead and could no longer speak the truth.
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*What’s the punishment for Gestapo failure in this episode? Death? Pretty much, the punishment was the “Russian-Front” which meant death in 1960’s America. Every American borne between 1940-1965 grew up knowing of the Russian contribution in WW II and yet the Orwellian erasure of history continues apace.
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“There has never been an escape from Stalag 13!” No wonder the Gestapo officer isn’t buying that, he walks in on a scene where one of the POW’s is enjoying cocktails with the Commandant and his secretary – I love it!
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Before your time Y…before FDRism/FDRists was/were washed away, there was an America that laughed at it’s own foibles but…when a job needed doing, this country was deadly serious about getting ‘er done. I know, it’s hard to believe from your vantage point…looking at the wreckage that surrounds you but, before the 3LA’s coup d’état in ’63 that vouchsafed the Viet Nam war, America was the cat’s meow…it really was.
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S, I respect your patriotism and love of your country, the way you think it should be, and the way you remember it. I cannot really understand or share that emotion, but at the very least, as an empathic entity, I can acknowledge it.
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Did the Romanians destroy their border forests to make it easier for their Ukranazistani equivalents to catch refuseniks?
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That was the impression I got, but it wasn’t completely clear. Seems like the Romanians are playing a double game: They cut down their own forests and do whatever they can to dissuade the refugees from coming; but if a refugee does make it through the obstacles, then the other rules kick in and they have to offer them housing and welfare benefits!
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In your translation of the original article (and also one of Brennan’s comments) the term “draft dodger” is used. That made me flash back to Amerika’s Vietnam War, when those words were frequently heard. Draft dodgers fleeing to Canada! You’re not old enough to have experienced that era Yalensis, you wet-behind-the-ears yoof. But the dynamic of draft-dodging the U.S. Selective Service (which is what the draft board was named — my dad worked for them in his Army role during the late ‘60s) shows how things have changed.
Back then, a guy with a low draft number could just drive across the border and set up shop in Canada. People didn’t have to show passports then! Not like now, when everyone’s* country is effectively a minimum security prison. If you want to leave the prison for a while, you have to show the papers that give you permission to exit.
When the American draft dodgers got to Canada, they could fit into society. Get jobs, rent places to live, get a telephone line, etc. Those were the days when phones sat on a table and had a cable that plugged into a wall socket! Which seems restrictive compared to the free-ranging mobile phones people have now. But back then, you did not have to prove your right to live in a place in order to get a phone number. If you had the money, which you could pay in cash over the counter to an actual human clerk, you’d be talking. (Probably after a period of waiting for a lineman to come to your place to hook you up. Stuff moved slower then.) When I immigrated to Vancouver in 2009, I had to show my work visa in order to get a land line installed, start a bank account, etc. Every low-level desk flunky is effectively an immigration officer with the power to check my papers to see if I belong there. If these phone company people, with no training in immigration law, did not like what I provided, they could say “No phone for you!” at best. Or maybe call the police to have me arrested if they were pissy Karen types. When you’re not a citizen of a nation, every petty corporate drone is one of Big Brother’s eyeballs.
I don’t know the nuts and bolts of what it took to get work in Canuckistan then (and I can’t be arsed to Yandex old first-person recollections of the draft-dodger lifestyle just for a meaningless Internet comment.) But I bet it was relatively easy to get a job lifting crates at a warehouse or chopping logs in a forest if you were young, strong and capable of following the boss’s orders. People were also not bound down by the medical system the way they are today, either. Modern medicine is amazingly better than what existed in the draft-dodger period, with the sophisticated technology for diagnosing illness and the methods of treating what is discovered. But it’s expensive. So no country with that has advanced med-tech is going to let non-citizens access it. (And increasingly, it’s out of reach for non-rich citizens, too. Witness Amerikkka, and the National Health Service in Brutain that’s being steadily disemboweled.) Draft dodgers didn’t have to deal with shackles at a doctor’s office.
Lastly, coz this has already gotten too long, national governments were more separated in the draft-dodging days. Take Canada. It was independent from the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s. Pierre Trudeau, even though he DID impose martial law that one time, did not obey every Amerikan diktat the way his simpering son does. Pierre thought the Vietnam War was obscene, so he refused to participate. His country helped the young American men who wanted to avoid it. The father did not capture potential draftees and force them back across the border. If there was a military draft in the U.S. in the future, you just KNOW the son would be arresting any evasive American who snuck into the provinces and forcing them into prison buses headed south. It’s a One-World Government in many ways in North America. The situation your article depicts in Romania, where authorities do not automatically kowtow to their neighbour’s policies, is a throwback to bygone days.
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I debated with myself about using the term “draft dodger”, which has so many negative connotations (of cowardice, for example) for American readers. But I couldn’t really think of a different term to use to translate the Russian word “uklonist” (literally “decliner”, “one who declines”, which brings up images of Bartleby the Scrivener!). Eventually I started using “Refusenik” which is more slang and not a literary term but gets the semantics across.
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For the record Bukko/Y,
Let’s be clear, when I denigrate “draft-dodgers” I do so with certain caveats. A man who is “anti-war” when he is at risk and then turns into a righteous-fanatical-war-cultist the moment the danger his passed is the “draft-dodger” I direct my ire at and…that describes the overwhelming majority Viet Nam War draft-dodgers. It’s these hypocrites that enable the 3LAs neocolonialist wars while simultaneously ennobling their evasion of participation in said wars.
For example over 90% of the American public supported the Invasion of Iraq. The Baby-boomer demographic, who where potential Viet Nam War draftees, showed the strongest support of all demographics !!! I mean, WTF?
The contrary to that is the small segment of deeply religious people of both left & right I know and respect that have been consistently against the neocolonialist wars of the post November 1963 coup era [still ongoing].
Another contrary example is that of Mohamed Ali who, didn’t actually dodge the draft, he said he wouldn’t serve and he was punished, he didn’t dodge the draft at all and he was consistent in his opposition to the neocolonialist wars of the post 1963 coup era. I have the highest respect for his resistance to the draft. Only a tiny number of men truly resisted the draft and went to prison.
Another “anti-draft” group I respect, is the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War; as a group they have been morally consistent since they first appeared, they have been consistently against the neocolonialist wars of the post November 1963 coup era.
It’s those draft-dodgers, whose “morality”, whose “opposition” to wars is based solely on who is asked to serve in them that makes me wretch. It’s those draft-dodgers, that use “morality” as a fig leaf to clothe their naked-nihilism that draws my ire, not the tiny fraction of the population who is genuinely interested in peace through justice.
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I relate some pretty grim news, Trump continues his self-destructive pattern of hiring people that seek to destroy and/or usurp him:
“Trump, in an interview [said] Nikki Haley will “be on our team”… [he] specifically mention[ed] Sens. JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Rep. Elise Stefanik, & Ben Carson as possible [VP] choices”.
All seem to be radically-hard-core-Israel-supporters which makes Michigan winnable for Biden and helps Biden in FL. All appear to meet 3LA fitness standards for usurpation should Trump break free of DNC’s lawfare fetters and win election. Does Trump have a secret death wish? It sure seems so, especially with Rubio’s family background, I’d sure as hell try avoid passing by any grassy knolls while any of these people are in the line of succession.
On the other hand, Biden fans have cause for celebration, these choices, should any of them get the nod, are great news for those ardent policy supporters of the Biden/Cheney/Hillary/Obama Administration, [singular-intended]. Any one of the aforementioned VP candidates will make the election closer and much easier to steal.
For a while it looked like Trump wanted to avoid repeating the personnel mistakes of his first Administration…sadly, that does not appear to be the case now. Jared Kushner still appears to be in charge of Trump’s choice of staff and win or lose, America is the poorer for it.
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So, Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans will vote for Biden as the lesser evil. You’re right, I think Trump just doomed himself! Biden, however, is deteriorating very fast, both mentally and physically. I have this horrible premonition that Killery is going to step up to the plate at the very last moment, as a replacement candidate, and then defeat Trump. It’s like Alien vs Predator, you can’t really tell which monster is scarier!
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I might have been too harsh by including Ben Carson in my disparagement…my bad.
Still, where’s Tulsi, where’s DeSantis, where’s Vivek on this list? Any of the names I just mentioned would be a very good life insurance policy, all will contribute otherwise unobtainable votes, all will add energy, have excellent records of personal success and thought long and hard about governments role in improving the lives of ordinary citizens, all know the limits of government, all know that finance/globalist need government guide-rails, all know that power has limits and none appear corrupt…to be personally on the take.
Hillary? OMFG !!!
…and so it goes.
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