Fleeing Russia’s draft rumours

Russian soldiers on the final day of military training exercises in Minsk, Belarus.

AS anxiety over rumours of a forced military mobilisation began to sweep through Moscow, Eradzh, a 36-year-old entrepreneur, turned to his artificial intelligence assistant to parse the news and calculate the likelihood of a draft.

Eventually, the probability became high enough that he asked the programme to find him a cheap flight out of Russia.