Nikita spent two days in traffic before making it to Georgia, one of thousands of Russian men trying to evade Ukrainian military service.

The last wave of Russian exiles since the war began in February has seen men of military age pour into the Caucasus country – in cars in a column about 20 kilometers long, on bicycles and a few kilometers on foot to the border crossing.

“I have no choice but to flee Russia,” Nikita told AFP as he stood in front of the Georgian side of the Kazbegi border crossing in a narrow rocky gorge.

“Why on earth would I go to this crazy war?” The 23-year-old added: “I’m not cannon fodder. I’m not a killer,” he said as a vulture circled overhead in the clear sky.

Like most men who spoke to AFP, he refused to give his last name for fear of retribution.

Denis, 38, said: “Our president wants to draw us all into the fratricidal war he has declared for completely illegitimate reasons.”

“I want to escape,” he said with a sad smile. “For me it’s not a nice vacation in Georgia, it’s emigration.”

Alexander Sudakov, a 32-year-old production manager, said after twenty years under President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule, “The mobilization was the last straw.”

“Ukrainians are our brothers, I don’t understand how could I go there to kill them or be killed.”

He said Georgia is the first choice for those fleeing conscription because Russians can enter visa-free and stay for up to a year.

He said he would consider applying for asylum in a European Union country as soon as his wife and young son, whom he left behind in his native Saint Petersburg, came to live with him.

The influx of Russian immigrants has caused mixed feelings in a country where painful memories of the 2008 Russian invasion linger.

The five-day war left Georgia divided, with Russian troops stationed in its two separatist regions, which the Kremlin recognized as independent after the EU negotiated a ceasefire.

Nearly 50,000 Russians fled to Georgia in the first four months of the war, the tiny Black Sea state’s statistics office said in June.

About 40,000 more fled to Armenia, another top destination that also doesn’t require visas for Russians, during the same period.

On Saturday, Russian authorities acknowledged for the first time that there was a significant outflow of travelers from the country.

The local interior ministry in a Russian region bordering Georgia said there was a backlog of around 2,300 cars waiting to reach the border.

The ministry urged people to “refrain from travel” towards Georgia, saying movement to the checkpoint was “difficult” and additional traffic officers had been deployed.

But Nikita said “wild corruption” was to blame for the traffic jam.

He said police regularly closed traffic and created artificial congestion “to extort money from desperate people.”

“It currently takes up to three days to drive 20 kilometers to the Georgian border, but if you pay the police a bribe, it’s only a matter of a few hours, they would escort you to the border,” he said, adding, that he knew of cases where people paid hundreds of dollars.

Alexander said he paid the police $1,200 and it still took him about 30 hours to reach the Georgian border.

Nikita said the wave of Russian emigration seen so far is just the beginning of a mass exodus.

“Millions will follow, nobody wants to go to this war – not even the Russians, who are poisoned by the government propaganda and like the idea of ??Russia becoming the dominant in the post-Soviet space again.”

Igor, 32, is one of them.

“I’m a patriot, I support Putin and the special military operation in Ukraine,” said the 32-year-old IT specialist.

“But I personally can’t go to war because I’m the only breadwinner in the family and I have this damn mortgage.”

He said he plans to work from Georgia for a Russian IT company but will be forced to return to Russia when his passport expires in six months.

“I’ll be alive for six months until March, that’s all I know for sure.”