August 20, 2022
Three months ago, Sonya, a 25-year-old who works at a major mobile gaming company and moonlights as a tutor, made one of the toughest decisions of her life: She left Russia.
She had an old but cozy communal apartment with her boyfriend and two other roommates in Moscow’s city center, a tight-knit group of friends, and spent several days a week taking classes at a local dance academy—her lifelong passion.
“It’s my home. My family, friends are there. My whole life. How can you possibly abandon all these things?” she told Fortune.
But like countless other young educated Russians, Sonya, who asked that only her first name be used, packed her bags and fled the country after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Over 3.8 million Russians left from January to March this year, according to the Federal Security Services’ own estimates. Some left for work or travel reasons, but many also left because of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Other estimates put the number of people who left because of the war at 300,000 to 3.8 million. The exact number is still unknown. A recent survey from non-governmental organization OK Russians says that the average age of Russians who left the country after Feb. 24 is 32 years old, while 80% of them have a higher education degree.
And as the war approaches its six month anniversary, the country is experiencing a second wave of outward migration, as individuals and families who needed more time to wrap up their lives are now leaving. And although the estimates vary widely, this year’s mass exodus from the country is comparable to the initial emigration out of Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed and 1.2 million Russians left in 1992 and 1993. Russia’s current, large-scale brain drain of young, skilled and educated citizens, could decimate sectors from journalism, to academia, and technology, experts say.
Sonya was part of the second exodus. In March, she bought tickets for the cheapest flight out, which was $650—only slightly less than her monthly salary of $750—and left in May. She said she realized early on that life in Russia was untenable, because of “the war… more horrid details about the situation in Ukraine were being revealed. The government, the system. Inhumane [and] anti-democratic laws. A ruined economy.”
“Everyday we were, and still are, going through an uncontrollable stream of shame and anger,” she says.
For a better future
Almost overnight, Putin’s war on Ukraine turned Russia into a global pariah and plunged the economy into chaos.
International leaders condemned Putin’s actions, and Western nations hit the country with unprecedented sanctions, including cutting it off from SWIFT, the international payments system.
Since February, over 1,000 global companies have curbed their operations in Russia, curtailing job opportunities and access to goods and services for Russians. Inflation soared to nearly 18%, while real wages plunged 7.2% in April.
In the first quarter of this year, the number of Russians living below the poverty line surged to 20.9 million—14.3% of the population, compared to 12.4 million in the last quarter of 2021, an increase of nearly 67%, according to Russia’s government statistics agency, which attributes the rise in poverty to inflation. Former Putin aide Andrei Illarionov told the BBC in April that this number could double or triple as the war continues.
As a result, young people in Russia envision an uncertain and unstable life ahead due to the war. They’re more opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than other demographics groups because they don’t want war, nor to be isolated from the rest of the world, according to surveys and experts.
“They feel more acutely than other groups that the war has deprived them of a future,” Kseniya Kirillova, an analyst for think tank Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told Fortune.
Last June, 23-year-old Roman Pastukhov left his hometown of Blagoveshchensk, a small Russian city where China is a 5-minute pontoon ride away. He knew he had to leave Russia to obtain a widely-recognized post-graduate degree, and had received a scholarship to study environmental science and technology in Japan.
COURTESY OF ROMAN PASTUKHOV
COURTESY OF GRISHANTI HOLON
Now, the “vast majority of the creative class that I know has already left Russia. [Our community] in Bali alone is several hundred people,” Holon says.
Academics, activists and tech workers are also leaving in droves. Around 10% of Russia’s tech workforce has left—or is planning to leave—the country, the Russian Association for Electronic Communications told Russia’s Parliament in May.
Elena, a 31-year-old freelancer who creates content on YouTube, shared her story with Fortune in March, when she fled Moscow for Istanbul. Her elderly parents ask when she will return, but she says she has no plans to do so because the “news and ideas coming from the Russian government terrifies me,” she told Fortune.
She’s now learned basic Turkish and opened an account with a European digital bank. She says her friends have settled in Brazil and South Korea.
“Educated people who understand the real situation are leaving the country; selling their houses, making different documents, and learning foreign languages,” she says.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ELENA
In January 2021, 36-year-old Andrey Gusev, the product head for blockchain and gaming firm Sabai Ecoverse, left Zelenograd, a small city outside of Moscow, for Phuket for better career opportunities. He has no plans to return.
“Seventy percent of my friends, who were in intellectual spheres…like IT, science and engineering, have left or are actively looking for ways to leave Russia,” he told Fortune.
Another tech worker, Alexander Salomatov, founder of metaverse and crypto consulting firm Soulmate Consulting, left Moscow for Bali in January of this year. He wanted to develop tech projects with a global team and user base, which seemed difficult to do in Russia. But it was the war that reinforced his belief that “now is not the best time” to live in Russia and traditional allies like Belarus and Kazakhstan.
“I can’t image what [good] is going to happen in Russia… if all of the most talented, energetic, and enterprising people have left their homeland,” Holon says.
Lost human capital
The mass flight of human capital—tech workers, academics, journalists, and anti-war activists—could decimate certain sectors and hurt a Russian economy that’s already reeling and largely cut off from international trade and business.
The country has now lost its “most valuable human resources,” Michael Reynolds, director of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies at Princeton University, told Fortune. “Young, educated, talented, and entrepreneurial Russians who, with their education and skills, would have become leaders in the Russian economy and helped drive its growth,” he says.
Some Russians will continue to contribute to their home economy through remote work, and can act as a sanctions buffer by setting up import-export operations in countries like Turkey, Armenia, and India. But the “bulk of this talent will be lost,” Reynolds says.
The Russian economy isn’t simply going to collapse because of the exodus, experts say. The supply of talented and skilled workers remaining in Russia—approximately only 30% of Russians hold a passport that lets them travel abroad—is “sufficient to keep the economy afloat,” Margarita Zavadskaya, a social science senior research fellow at the University of Helsinki’s Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies, told Fortune.
“But those who would replace [emigres] are likely to be less [skilled] on average and will… be more politically compliant,” she says. Some young Russians who stayed behind, like poet and teacher Katya V., who told her story to Fortune in March, says that she and her friends who remained in Russia did so to support their families and to protest from within. “I don’t want to give up everything here for [the government] to enjoy [ruling] without any resistance,” she says.
Still, the bottom line is that the Russian economy is losing competent and competitive [workers],” Zavadskaya says.
Putin has sought to portray the brain drain from the country as a positive, saying Russians who left the country and those who hold pro-western views as “traitors” who seek to destroy Russia.
“The problem is that… their [slave] mentality is there, not here, with our people. I am convinced that a natural and necessary self-detoxification of society like this will strengthen our country,” Putin said earlier this year.
But the government is showing signs that it might not let go of expats so easily.
Russian human rights organization Perviy Otdel (First Department) reported in May that FSB agents have started asking the relatives of those who have fled the country to ask them to return.
And Russia’s prospects for rebuilding and reaccumulating its lost human capital will ultimately be difficult in the short-term and with Putin still in power.
“Russia’s economic revival is only possible if the devastating war [ends], and the existing political regime collapses,” Zavadskaya says.
Russia would need to promise economic and political stability to attract Russians to return, Reynolds says. But as he notes, “there is no prospect of stability now.”
“Everyday we were, and still are, going through an uncontrollable stream of shame and anger,”
This is dedicated to all those Russians who still possess a conscience, compassion and a sense of righteousness. Thank you.
When a country’s best and brightest citizens flee, then you should take note. Things are not going well…
“Deprived them of a future”. And how about the thousands and millions of Ukrainians who have been killed raped displaced. I have no sympathy whatsoever for any Russian. They allowed this pariah to come to Russia and lead and now they run. Well, fuck you. How about if you stay and fix the dpfuckin mess you selfish bastards. Not very Christian of me but ho2 can you been Christian to a fuck8n cockroach.
It definitely tests your soul. I’m glad God is God and I’m not. In many ways and many areas I’ve fallen short of following Him. Undeserved anger has been one of them. At times seeing what’s going on in the world I perhaps go to far in my hostility. Wars were documented throughout the Bible, some just, some not. Humankind can make a real mess of things, but what Vladolf Putler has done to many is total evil which must be violently opposed. Many have given themselves over to this and similar evil. Bottom line we all fall short, we all must repent or perish.
But when we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The law demonstrated we can’t be Holy without Jesus the true Messiah. Either we say to Him Your will be done in my life. Or He says to us your will be done in your life. The Light has conquered the darkness but the whole story still has to play out. Cockroaches will need to be trampled, sprayed, and eradicated, or else we’ll be overrun by evil before the appointed time of evils last stand in opposition to the goodness of God Almighty.
The departure of young, liberal Russians strengthens rather than weakens the nazi regime, which does not need intellectuals or thinkers to function.
Since all the holders of positions in the ruling elite are evil criminals appointed by putler, there seems little chance of a coup.
Only mass starvation, food riots and a catastrophic economic collapse will get these slaves on the streets in their millions and so far the west is imposing only weak sanctions.
As for the immigrants, host countries should be very careful who they take : there is a parallel with similarly vile Mid East and African dictatorships: embedded within them are terrorists, spies, torturers, rapists, murderers and propagandists.
One surprising thing : Cyprus has been full of rich putlerite vermin for many years. Most of them bought their way in before 2004, when Cyprus joined the EU.
At the start of putler’s Holocaust, RuZZian vermin with Z flags trolled and disrupted street demonstrations held by Ukrainians in Cypriot cities.
The reaction was the formation of a FB group : Russians in Cyprus stand with Ukraine. They hold their own demos in Nicosia, as well as joint gatherings with Ukrainians.
A promising sign.
Putinazis in Cyprus have reacted just exactly as you would expect. From Russians in Cyprus stand with Ukraine FB page :
“This morning, unidentified people hung posters depicting Russian activists living in Cyprus who actively oppose Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Putin regime. The posters were hung in Limassol, on the Molos embankment; the activists’ names were stipulated in Russian. This “installation” imitates funeral photographs with mourning ribbons and candles, which are usually lit in memory of the deceased people.
All depicted in the “installation” are the Russians who actively participate in the anti-war and anti-Putin movement in Cyprus. Several people whose photographs were posted on Molos have already filed a death threat complaint with the police.
Apparently, the “artistic intent” of the “installation” authors is to intimidate the Russian opposition activists in Cyprus.
According to the activists, the Cypriot representatives of Rossotrudnichestvo (which is under EU sanctions) with the support of the Russian embassy in the Republic of Cyprus could possibly organize this public intimidation action.
Comments:
Mikhail Savostin
“Today in Limassol, Putin’s gangs hung up a poster of the guys who don’t support the war. As you can see, all with black ribbons and candles.
My photo is present on this poster as well.
I perceive such an action as a life threat for each of us.
I won’t be surprised if something happens to me, I was repeatedly threatened in the Stavropol Territory by officials and policemen. My car brakes were fiddled with while the previous head of the local police was still holding the office.
Now this poster is in Cyprus, in the European country where I have not been able to obtain political asylum for almost a year.”
Ilya Lazarenko
“It is surprising that in an EU country one can encounter such rampant anti-European forces. Supporters of the aggressive war unleashed by the Russian Federation, the enemies of the free world, feel so unaccountable that they think they can get away with this. It seems to me a reasonable assumption that this death threat comes from circles associated with Rossotrudnichestvo. The so-called “patriots of the Russian Federation” never stopped before the most heinous crimes, not to mention such a trifle.
Such threats must be taken seriously.”
Natalya Boyko
Russian propaganda does not have enough space in its own country, it spreads out of all cracks and has also reached Cyprus. In the city of Limassol, on the most crowded street, a mourning banner was installed with photographs of living people, where mine is also.
Wildness, cruelty rolls over.
Of course, I understand that this is all done in response to our anti-war position. For not accepting Russian aggression on the territory of Ukraine, for supporting the Ukrainian people, for the desire to see Russia as a democratic and friendly state that does not attack its neighbors.
How much anger and hatred there is in these people, but I’m still sure that peace and love will win. No war!
On July 27, a propagandistic pro-Russian poster photo exhibition “The Candle of Memory” was launched in the municipal park of Limassol. This has already been named a “monument to Russian propaganda”. This caused sharp criticism from the Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of Cyprus as well as of citizens of Ukraine and Russia.
The complaints about the conduct of such propaganda activities were sent by the Russians and the Ukrainian diaspora to the municipality of Limassol as well as to the mayor of the city, Mr. Nikos Nikolaidis.
The installation of a photo booth with the Russian propaganda was organized by the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots of Cyprus (CSORC) with the financial support of Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian organization that has just been hit by the European sanctions.”
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If those migration estimates are true, there could be 900,000 NEW Moskali that have moved to Georgia the last 6 months. Poor little Georgia. I doubt their culture can withstand that onslaught.
Yes. It’s an invasion. Georgians hate putler, but their country is ruled secretly by a Russian oligarch with a Georgian name: Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Only Saakash can save Georgia and he is being slowly murdered by putler agents in the regime.
One more thought, people, before there are any misunderstandings about my first post. This is dedicated to those Russians who still possess a conscience, compassion and a sense of righteousness. NOT to any who pretend, who are faking it. I will not forsake people who possess a conscience, compassion and a sense of righteousness, no matter where they may come from.
Sir OFP I understand your compassion. In certain respects I admire it. However, perhaps it is seeing all the hurt that this Russian race has caused, not only in our beloved Ukraine but Georgia, Chechnya and even in their own homeland, that my heart is closed. It becomes even more hardened when I see these vermin run from what they caused rather then staying and fixing what they caused. In my simple mind, it represents the epitome of selfishness and “what’s in it for me” attitude. I try not to judge but I admit it’s difficult not to judge these vermin.
Sir OFP my respect and admiration of you and all the editors on this site only grows daily. You guys spend so many hours to inform and all I can say is that you guys are AWESOME!!! As far as I’m concerned you can post what you want and I will never jusge your intentions.
Sir Cap, thank you for the kind words. But, you and Bill and Mason are a part of this wonderful team now. You are also doing your fair share to support Ukraine and fight evil. At this point, I want to tell you that I’m glad for it. I am glad to hear your opinions, even the ones I don’t agree with, which are very rare. You and the others are a valuable part of our mutual effort to getting the word out.
I understand your point of view regarding Russians. I respect it. I still prefer those who I mentioned before, over those who support evil. Just think; if enough righteous Russians were to leave, mafia land would be empty. This is the biggest problem; there aren’t enough to make a large enough difference. This comes years down the road, when the lack of brains will have a most detrimental effect on mafia land’s ability to develop and build new technologies.