Escaping Russia By Small Motorboat
Knocks rattled his apartment door one day last fall, and Maksim peered through the peephole to see two soldiers. They were military enlistment officers, he knew, expanding the vast conscription effort for the war in Ukraine to Russia’s remote Far East.
The 44-year-old fisherman kept in silence until the officers moved along. Knowing they would be back, Maksim went that night to the home of a friend, Sergei, who had received an unwelcome visit of his own. They pored over maps at Sergei’s kitchen table, trying to find a way to flee the country and a war where thousands of Russian men were dying. Sergei offered a plan that, at first, seemed unfathomable.
“I propose that we travel by sea,” Sergei said.
The idea was the start of a daring journey in a small fishing boat with a 60-horsepower motor to travel hundreds of kilometers over several days — past Russian border guards and through the treacherous Bering Sea — to win asylum on U.S. shores. It was a desperate quest for freedom, and one that did not go according to plan.
For months, thousands of Russian men have been fleeing the country. Some traveled by plane to Latin America, then northward, with more than 35,000 Russians arriving last year to seek asylum at U.S. borders.
Maksim and Sergei, who asked that their last names not be published to protect their families, did not have the money for such a journey, nor did they have much support. In the town of Egvekinot, between the mountains and the Bering Sea on the edge of the Arctic Circle, it seemed most everyone was a supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
With the aid of VPNs that allowed them to find news beyond nationalist propaganda, Sergei and Maksim had grown to reject the Kremlin’s narrative about the war. They would not willingly join what they saw as an unjustified invasion, launched by a government they opposed.
But Maksim was not sure they could survive a trip to the Alaska mainland. As they examined maps, they noticed St. Lawrence Island, part of Alaska, in the middle of
the Bering Sea.
“We can do that,” Maksim agreed. He had a boat, nearly five meters long, best suited for fishing in the tame waters of Kresta Bay. This journey would take them about 480 kilometers across Russian coastline, then deeper into turbulent seas.
By a Monday in September, they had a plan to depart by the end of the week, as soon as the weather calmed. They purchased several hundred liters of fuel, filling drums.
They gathered clothes and camping gear, coffee and cigarettes. They packed water, chicken, eggs, sausage, bread and potatoes. They charged their GPS unit and phones to help navigate the route.
Maksim’s parents and siblings — Indigenous Chukchi — were vacationing away from home and, hoping to keep their escape a secret, he opted not to share his plans with them. Sergei, 51, would be leaving behind a transportation business. Elsewhere in Russia were his mother and two daughters.
By Thursday, the men gathered at the shoreline. They told friends they were going “fishing,” then pushed off into the water.
The first leg of the route was a familiar one, just a couple hours across the bay to Konergino, where Maksim was born and where they could stay with his friends.
After spending the night and refueling themselves and the boat, they departed again in the morning, following the coast eastward for more than 160 kilometers. But the boat’s motor kept stalling every couple of hours, forcing them to troubleshoot it and adjust fuel lines, sowing worry.
They arrived at the community of Enmelen by 5 p.m., renting rooms. But a storm had arrived. When they awoke the next morning, it was still too rough. So was the next day.
The storm finally passed, and the men set out once again. The seas were much choppier, with crashing waves spraying over Sergei’s side of the boat. Water filled the base of the boat, the bilge pump grinding in a constant whir.
They were also wary about the towns ahead, on the eastern edge of the Chukchi Peninsula, where many Russian border guards were stationed. The men had turned their cellphones to airplane mode, hoping not to be tracked. They kept their satellite phone off. As they approached areas with more population, they veered into deeper waters, hoping that staying two kilometers offshore would be enough.
With the sun setting, they began searching for a place out of the elements where they could pull up their boat. They found a cove, dropped anchor and tied up to a boulder. There, they discovered an abandoned shack, its boards decaying. They set up a tent inside.
The following morning, Maksim trekked up a hillside with a pair of binoculars to look for border patrols and gauge whether the weather was clear enough to proceed to the most difficult part of the voyage: crossing the Bering Sea.
He worked his way back down to their campsite.
“The sea is calm,” he said. They cooked up some chicken, made tea and set off, using their GPS unit to point them toward St. Lawrence Island.
They had about 80 kilometers to go, watching as an orca followed them for part of the crossing. Then the waves started to rise again, tossing the boat through swells. Wave crests broke over the hull, dousing them.
Then, at the peak of one of the swells, Sergei stood up and shouted: “The island!”
The island was bathed in the orange glow of twilight. Villagers on all-terrain vehicles had spotted them and were zipping out to the shore.
Maksim put the boat into full throttle, then cut the engine as they sloshed up onto U.S. soil.
As the men climbed out of the boat, they opened up translation apps on their phones, typing out a message for those coming to greet them: “We don’t want the war. We want political asylum.”
Word spread through the community of Gambell, Alaska, home to about 600 people, nearly all Alaska Natives. As some used a tractor to pull the boat above the tide line, others brought the men to the local police station. Food began to arrive from all over town.
The men told the growing crowd about their journey and their desire for freedom, and people there spoke of the generational connections of Indigenous communities that span the Bering Sea, including the Chukchi people like Maksim.
The following day, the world of borders returned. To their surprise, U.S. immigration officers arrived from the mainland, and flew Sergei and Maksim off to what would be three months in immigration detention in Tacoma, Washington.
It was only last month that the two men were released, and they began contacting family and friends to let them know: They were alive. They had fled Russia. They were safe in the United States — for now.
Like most of the Russians who have begun arriving in America, they have received no assurances that they can stay. Asylum petitions can take a year or more to process. Winning them means being able to prove the threat they faced in Russia, something their lawyers in the United States feel confident about.
In the meantime, they have tried to sort out what a new life in the United States might mean. They signed up for English classes, and Sergei put out feelers on a new business venture. Maksim has started talking about going back to Alaska to retrieve the boat he left there, the one that saved them.