The former minister drove his big white truck north until he reached Michigan. The Great Lakes provided a welcome relief from the scorching Texas heat.
After years navigating the byzantine corridors of provincial Russian power, Denis Sharonov now works as a truck driver, steering his way through the vast highways of the US.
“It is heavenly up here in Michigan. Texas was too hot,” said Sharonov, a former agriculture minister of the Komi Republic in northern Russia, in an interview.
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has set off a historic exodus of his own people. Since the start of the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Russians are believed to have left the country, driven by their opposition to the war and the fear of being sent to the frontlines. Many have scrambled to find jobs in exile and plot out new lives from their laptops.
But few career changes are as unusual as that made by Sharonov, who fled Russia in September 2022 after receiving his draft papers.
“A lot of people don’t understand my choice. They mock me. They say I downshifted, from a regional minister to truck driver,” Sharonov said.
“But I don’t see it that way at all. I am proud of what I do,” he added.
Sharonov’s Instagram, once filled with images of him in a suit and tie meeting officials and local farmers in Komi, now resembles one of a travel blogger on a roadtrip across the country.
In 2020, he became the minister of agriculture of Komi, a landlocked region in the north of Russia almost the size of California. He had no previous experience in government but said he had been offered the job after more than a decade in the agriculture industry.
“I was curious to see how government works,” he said, but he quickly grew disillusioned by what he described as “rampant corruption and bureaucracy” that plagued his ministry.
“In Russia, the main reason people get into politics is to steal money. Corruption has ripped my country apart. Either you participate in it or you get tossed out,” Sharonov said.
He claimed he eventually fell out of favour with the regional head, Vladimir Uyba, after Sharonov refused to enter into corrupt land schemes and was dismissed in January 2022.
