Stuck at Mexico border, anti-war Russians sweat their futures as Ukrainians enter U.S.

U.S. officials have let dozens of Ukrainians through this week but Russians remain in limbo

Russians trying to enter the United States at the Mexican border are frustrated they are not getting in like Ukrainians are, despite leaving their homeland over the invasion of Ukraine.

Qazet.az reports that U.S. officials have let dozens of Ukrainians through this week but Russians remain in limbo, prompting some to camp on the pavement alongside a barbed wire border fence, defying warnings from Mexican authorities to leave.
Irina Zolkina, a math teacher who left Moscow with her four children and her daughter's boyfriend, burst into tears when a U.S. border agent on Thursday took one look at her stack of Russian passports and shook his head, saying they would have to wait - soon after officials ushered in six Ukrainian men.

"There are so many years of fear that we're living in ... it's awful inside Russia too," she told Reuters in the Mexican border city of Tijuana opposite San Diego, California.

Zolkina showed Reuters a BBC video of her arrest for attending an anti-war protest on Feb. 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine in what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" that Western allies have denounced.

She was released a few hours later and left Russia with her children the following week, she said, passing through Tashkent and Istanbul before reaching the Mexican beach resort of Cancun - a common jumping-off point for Russians heading to the U.S. border.