I’m a six-ft-tall Anne Frank, living in a storage closet

In a previous avatar, I worked in Higher Education alongside sports media. The opportunity to make a positive impact on the lives of young people kept me both youthful and hopeful. As Director of a University College in Moscow, my task was to “internationalise” the place and make it a happy home. Of course, my Rector had additional goals: to improve academic results and the College’s rankings—targets I managed to meet within three, happy years.

From that foundation, in August 2017, I began a new path—one that would eventually place me in the unthinkable position of making life-or-death decisions for young men from both Ukraine and Russia.

 Konstantin

Konstantin left Russia for home in 2019 to begin a specialist five-year degree at a top university in Kyiv. He had been my student for two years, and there had been hope he’d remain in Moscow and move on to the main university. But when he was denied a deserved scholarship, he headed south instead.

In May 2024, he was set to graduate a year early and had already applied for a PhD place at his institution. His academic adviser, however, warned him to flee.

A week before his thesis defence, military recruiters arrived at his parents’ home, demanding he report to the local military commission—immediately. Again, he turned to his adviser. “Get yourself out of the country,” she said. “I told you—there’s no chance of postgrad.”

Both of Konstantin’s parents are teachers, with a combined monthly salary of $750. With the help of relatives, they scraped together $5,000 and handed it over to the head of the local draft board. They were then told double that amount was required if Konstantin was to be allowed to defend his thesis. They were given four days to pay. They raised it. He defended—with excellent marks—and began assembling his PhD application.

“They came on a Sunday morning when my parents were at the market,” he told me via WhatsApp on Christmas Eve. “I opened the door—they punched, kicked, dragged me out into the hallway. Our neighbours heard my shouts and came to help. I broke free and hid in an old garage. That night I came home. My parents set me up in a storage closet in the basement. I’ve been living here since June 2024.”

In December, his father contacted me, seeking help to get his “child” out of the country. “It breaks my heart,” he said, “to see him living in the basement like a homeless person.”

Thanks to the brilliant head of the international office at a Polish university I once worked closely with, Konstantin now works in one of their labs and is preparing for a pre-PhD course. His escape from Ukraine took two days—no bribes, only the kindness of both Ukrainian and Russian border guards.

 Vanya

From August 2022, I lectured at one of Russia’s most prestigious universities while also leading the international office at another elite institution. Vanya was one of my students at the former. A dual citizen of Russia and Ukraine, he narrowly avoided the September 2022 mobilisation and graduated in 2023.

That July, his father was diagnosed with aggressive leukaemia and required treatment abroad. Vanya found a clinic in Voronezh, Russia, but there was no way to obtain permission to leave Ukraine. He made the journey from Moscow to Lviv, via Poland, only to find his father had returned home from a brief hospital stay and was now receiving palliative care.

“My sister opened the door,” he told me. “I could hear voices in the living room where Dad’s bed was—people asking for me. Dad, who couldn’t speak by then, looked at me and motioned with his eyes towards the balcony. I went out, hid inside a closet, and waited.”

Vanya couldn’t attend his father’s funeral. A family friend later took him to their summer cottage, after which he moved between hideouts.

In January 2025, I received a message request on Instagram from what I assumed was a crypto scammer or a lovelorn African prince. I ignored it—until I reached Ireland. It was Vanya, using his sister’s phone. He believed the military commissars would eventually track him down and asked me for help.

In February 2025, Vanya crossed into Slovakia with assistance from ethnic Slovaks in Ukraine, and from there travelled to Hungary. Thanks to another good friend at a local university, he now works as a lab assistant.

When limited mobilisation was announced in Russia in September 2022, I was about to fly to India on a recruitment trip. I made three attempts to leave Moscow within five days: twice I was blocked due to visa issues; the third time, a man my age with a son not much older than mine asked if he could take my place on an earlier flight to Dubai.

That Friday afternoon, what stays with me is not what he said, but how his eyes flicked between me and his son. The eyes of a father desperate to save his child. I smiled and stepped aside.

Since then, I’ve been asked whether I’d use my nationality or contacts to get my own sons out of military service. I deplore war—for any reason, anywhere. But all children are special only to their parents.

If the call came, would I hide my eldest boy? Would I save him, so that the son of a less well-off family is forced to serve in his stead? No. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

And yet—I am a hypocrite. I didn’t want any of my students to die in war.

Increasingly, I hear the phrase: “Nobody wants to be the last to die”—especially in relation to the war in Ukraine and Russia. The people saying this are often the very same who were the loudest, most bloodthirsty cheerleaders when the war began for them, one Thursday morning in February 2022.

But it is not their children hiding in basement closets or swimming across rivers to escape into Romania. It is not their sons boarding crowded buses, taxis, or budget flights in desperate attempts to dodge mobilisation.

And the moment their precious sons are called up, the cries for peace—at any cost—will be heard loud and clear.

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