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Military-age men clogged airports and border crossings trying to flee, and some ended up in distant cities like Istanbul and Namangan, Uzbekistan.

Tickets to his preferred destinations — Istanbul and Almaty, Kazakhstan — had already sold out, so he settled on Namangan, Uzbekistan, a city he said he had never even heard of.

A passenger next to him had never heard of Namangan either.

“I realized that the stakes just were very high,” said Aleksandr, 37, in a phone interview from Namangan.

There were already none available for his preferred destinations, such as Istanbul, so he opted for Namangan, Uzbekistan, a city he had never heard of.