Facing a long prison sentence or a forced trip to the front line of a war he opposes, Artyom Vovchenko believed it was worth taking a risk.

Facing a long prison sentence or a forced trip to the front line of a war he opposes, Artyom Vovchenko believed it was worth taking a risk. Facing a long prison sentence or a forced trip to the front line of a war he opposes, Artyom Vovchenko believed it was worth taking a risk. Artyom Vovchenko deserted the Russian military, fled to the United States, was deported back to Russia and escaped again.Credit...The New York Times By the time his U.S. deportation flight touched down last summer in Moscow, Artyom Vovchenko had been drained of his fighting spirit. He had deserted the Russian military and fled his homeland in opposition to the war in Ukraine. He had spent 13 months in three U.S. detention centers before being denied asylum in America. And he had been deported in chains by the Trump administration back to Russia, where he faced up to 10 years in prison. After he landed, security officials at the Moscow airport saw that Mr. Vovchenko, 27, was wanted by military prosecutors. By then, his despair about his treatment by Russia and the United States had swelled into resentful resignation. “To hell with you all. Do whatever you want. I know I’m right,” Mr. Vovchenko said he told himself. “I had made my peace. Basically, I was ready to die.” The New York Times first reported on Mr. Vovchenko last year after he was swept up in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. What followed for him was an encounter with a Russian system overwhelmed by soldiers who had fled the front in Ukraine or suffered injuries, an apparatus dotted with loopholes despite President Vladimir V. Putin’s aggressive wartime authoritarianism.