The Russian draft-dodgers who fled to Alaska in a dinghy

By Charlie McCann

As the wind gathered strength, Sergei (pictured above, left) and Maksim scanned the water nervously. Five days had passed since they left their hometown on the Siberian coast and struck out across the Bering Sea in Maksim’s tiny fishing boat, which was powered only by a small outboard motor. The voyage had been perilous. With its mercurial storms and frigid temperatures, the Bering Sea is one of the world’s most dangerous bodies of water. The pair had travelled down the coast of Chukotka, Russia’s easternmost province (it is so remote that it is often excised from maps of the world). They had braved lashing storms and somehow managed to evade detection in a heavily militarised region of Russia. Now they were tantalisingly close to the end of their 300-mile odyssey. Alaska lay just 20 miles away.