Igor Mavliutov was 17 when he first came to Tuolumne County nearly nine years ago as a foreign exchange student from Russia, but now he’s a political refugee seeking asylum from persecution for speaking out against the totalitarian dictatorship that rules his native land.
Mavliutov, 26, returned to the county last month with his friend Nikolai Sergeev, also 26, after a harrowing journey that began days after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, which has led to a prolonged and bloody war between the two nations.
“I was trying to make a better place to live, trying to change things, but it just became so dangerous,” Mavliutov said of the events that led up to his flight from Russia. “You can’t just go out on the street with a piece of paper that says ‘No war’ now.”
The pair are currently staying with friends of their church in Mi-Wuk Village after reaching out to Cyndi Kirk, who previously helped connect Mavliutov with a host family when he was last in Tuolumne County for the 2013-14 school year as part of the Future Leaders Exchange Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
They are now looking for a permanent place to live either in the county or elsewhere in Northern California while going through the asylum process.
Mavliutov and Sergeev left Russia for what was supposed to be only a temporary trip to Bulgaria to celebrate Mavliutov’s birthday on March 1.
“As we were getting ready to go, the war broke out,” Mavliutov said.
They had to go through Turkey to Bulgaria and caught COVID-19 along the way, resulting in them having to quarantine for weeks.
Mavliutov said while in Bulgaria, and as the war between Russia and Ukraine was continuing to escalate, he got word that police officers in plain clothes started coming by his parents’ home asking questions about him.
Prior to leaving Russia, Mavliutov had posted jokes and memes about the war to show support for Ukraine. He had also previously been involved with protests against the Putin regime and had brushes with Russian government agents, including a 2018 confrontation with an FSB officer whom he recorded threatening to kill him.
“I showed the real, bad FSB guy, and they were not happy about it,” Mavliutov said of the 2018 encounter, which was covered by the local newspaper in his hometown of Kazan, Russia. “I definitely got onto some list, but I thought it was maybe a combination of things.”
Mavliutov and Sergeev then made the decision to seek political asylum, but they couldn’t do it in Bulgaria because of agreements the country had in place with Russia.
They also needed to get out of Bulgaria after being assaulted in the streets for being Russian by people who were against the war in Ukraine, but it would take too long to get a travel visa to the U.S. due to COVID-19 and embassies being closed, so they flew to Mexico.
“A lot of Russians seek asylum via Mexico in Tijuana,” Mavliutov said.
Mavliutov and Sergeev arrived in Mexico City and traveled to Tijuana, where they would apply for entry into the U.S.
The process at the border took three weeks before they were cleared to cross on May 14 and given a court date for their asylum request. Mavliutov said people in Mexico were helpful and sympathetic to their plight.
“Everyone in Mexico was nice to us, and they all told us they understood we were escaping dictatorship,” he said. “It’s similar Germans escaping Nazi Germany in the 1940s.”
They initially had a sponsor in New York, which they were required to have before entering to ensure they would show up to court, but they essentially couldn’t find a place to live. They arrived in Tuolumne County days later after contacting Kirk, who said she would help them.
Mavliutov was born and raised in Kazan, a city of about 1.5 million people in central Russia, about 300 miles outside the capital city of Moscow.
Kazan is known for its rich history dating back more than 1,000 years, cultural diversity, universities, beautiful buildings and location along the banks of the Volga River, but Mavliutov said there’s a darker side when it comes to human rights.
“There’s a lot of corruption,” he said. “The police are brutal and known for torturing people.”
One example of that brutality made international headlines in 2012 when a group of police officers were accused of sodomizing and beating a man to death for refusing a stranger’s orders to pack up his fruit and vegetable stall at a market in the city.
Mavliutov said despite the corruption that has gotten worse over the past decade, he otherwise had a “really regular Russian childhood.”
“2000 to 2010 were the most liberal and free in Russia’s history,” he said.
Mavliutov lived with his mother, stepdad and younger brother, went to school, learned English as a second language, and became enthralled with the idea of becoming a filmmaker after seeing “Jurassic Park” at age 5.
Sergeev, who had never traveled outside of Russia until now, likewise described his upbringing as “just a regular normal life.”
“I never thought it would change so much in just a few months,” he said. “I always thought if I went to America, it would be as a tourist.”
The two say they began to awaken to the idea that something was going wrong in their country around the same time, after Putin was elected to his third term as president in 2012.
Mavliutov said the government started passing oppressive laws against LGBTQ people in 2013, then came the tougher crackdowns against political dissidents, such as the jailing of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot in 2012 over their anti-Putin protests.
However, both men say what ultimately drove home their disillusionment with their country’s government was Putin’s invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
“They started to oppress people more,” Sergeev said. “A lot of stupid laws were passed, and you could be put in prison for speaking your mind on social media.”
Mavliutov was in the midst of completing his senior year at Summerville High School when the Crimean annexation happened in 2014.
“In U.S. history class, I made a presentation that Vladimir Putin is the Adolf Hitler of the 21st century,” he said. “He’s not going to stop here.”
Another troubling development for Mavliutov was that when he talked to friends back home in Russia, many of them expressed support for the invasion of Crimea to his surprise, which he attributed to the country’s robust propaganda machine.
Mavliutov refers to friends who turned their support to Putin as having “went to the dark side.”
After graduating from Summerville High School in 2014, Mavliutov returned to Russia with heightened motivation to make films. He enrolled at the Kazan Institute of Culture and Arts and spent 2016 and 2017 working on his first feature titled “Russian Noir,” which they shot in English with hopes of selling it to Netflix.
“We were trying to hide this message of our society being very rebellious against this oppressive government within this light-hearted noir about detectives, with a little bit of sci-fi,” he said. “There were silly jokes and pop culture references, but it had a message.”
However, when he showed the unfinished film to some teachers, they expressed concern about what they deemed to be anti-government messages. The school ultimately pulled the plug and kicked him out.
Mavliutov ended up writing an English-language novel about the experience titled “The Tale of the Propagandist,” one of two books he’s completed but still needs to have edited.
Following the incident with the film and the recorded confrontation with the FSB officer, Mavliutov said he began to suffer from panic attacks and feelings of paranoia. He began keeping his writings in encrypted folders on his computer that required a password to unlock.
“Not because I didn’t want family to see it, but I was worried about police breaking down my door,” he said. “I thought, ‘What kind of 1984 stuff is that?’ ”
Mavliutov and Sergeev both are uncertain when, if ever, they will be able to return to their native country without the threat of arrest.
They both keep up with family back home through messaging apps, with Sergeev saying his departure has been tough on his older sister and other family members. The two are currently awaiting documents from home as proof of persecution before submitting their official application for asylum.
“We’re here for the freedom and democracy that we are so severely lacking in our country,” Mavliutov said. “Just seeking a better, free-er life.”
