Russians rush to leave when sanctions loosen and Putin squeezes disagreement over Ukraine war
One man, who feared he would soon be unable to buy insulin for his wife, loaded two suitcases of medicine, two into clothes and left with his wife to stay with his daughter in Germany.
The other left immediately after burying his mother and experienced settling in Israel, saying that war propaganda was being suppressed. The woman, who was arrested on an anti-war march, quickly collected her belongings and flew to Armenia with her young son.
A Russian who arrived in Finland on Monday said that a passenger near him after crossing his train shouted “Glory to Ukraine!”
Hard sanctions, growing isolation and the fear of the president
Vladimir Putinn increasingly oppressive regime is driving thousands of Russians out of their country. Although the figures are pale compared to the two million who have fled Ukraine, they may be at the forefront of Ukraine a wave of outgoing people political freedom and economic difficulties. Many of the outgoing are professionals and wealthy Russians as well as journalists, activists and cultural figures.
“My father said, ‘Go, go, go, you can get stuck here,'” Julia Zakharova, a 36-year-old employee of an American company, said Tuesday minutes after crossing the Finnish-Russian border. years on a plane between Russia and Greece, but now they have decided to move to Greece in the near future partly because she was seventh pregnant.
“I’m not going to give birth in Russia when the perspective is like this,” Zakharova said.
Exact information on how many Russian citizens have left in recent weeks was not available, and it is not clear that all those crossing the border would be absent in the long run. However, according to data shared by different countries, the figure is in the thousands.
About 44,000 people crossed the Russian border into Finland in February, compared to about 27,000 last year, according to the Finnish Border Guard. Bus and train tickets to Finland have been sold out, and the Finnish state railway company VR has announced that it will try to increase trains to Helsinki-St. Connection to St. Petersburg.
Some have left Russia for countries such as Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, which offer visa-free entry to Russians or with less stringent entry requirements.
Georgia’s economy minister has said 20,000 to 25,000 Russians have arrived in the country in recent days. Israel has issued 1,400 immigrant visas to Russians since the occupation of Ukraine, migrant authority Neta Briskin-Peleg said in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on Tuesday.
Opportunities to leave Russia are narrowing rapidly. Russia has reciprocally issued airspace bans restrict access to airlines, including those from the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada. As a result of sanctions against the Russian aviation sector, leased Russian aircraft were seized at airports outside the country. Major Russian airlines have stopped international flights, while the Moscow flagship
suspended all flights abroad except Belarus.
Some Russians fear that Putin may soon declare a state of war, which would allow it further censorship and closed the borders. Putin said Saturday there was no need to declare a state of war.
The St. Petersburg actor and director, who was arrested in a pre-war demonstration a few days after the Russian invasion, rushed after being released to buy plane tickets to Armenia for himself and his 5-year-old son.
He said he waited at the airport for 16 hours for a flight full of Russian families. Once in Yerevan, he learned that police had visited his address in St. Petersburg. He is worried about returning to Russia, but said he has enough money to make it to the Armenian capital for just one or two months.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said.
Putin has long sought to silence critics, but pressure increased last week when the Russian parliament passed a law imposing up to 15 years in prison for spreading “fakes” to the military.
“We are forbidden to even call it war,” said Evan Sergeyev, who traveled with his wife and their 5-year-old son to Barcelona to stay with friends indefinitely. Putin said his attack on Ukraine was a “special operation.”
In the Telegram messaging app, Russians are exchanging logistical details about visa purchases and Covid-19 test requirements and ticket availability.
The flight of educated, liberal Russians threatens the country’s long-term development in a brain drain that would not be Russia’s first. When the Soviet Union opened the door to greater Jewish migration in the 1970s, many scientists, engineers, and doctors left for Israel and the West.
After a flood of western sanctions hit Russia recently in response to Putin’s attack on Ukraine. A 50-year-old Russian man who said he worked for a U.S. company watched with concern the disappearance of medicine off the shelves in Moscow. He managed to find a pharmacy that still had insulin, packed as much as he could carry, and traveled with his wife by train to Helsinki, from where they planned to fly to Germany to move in with their student daughter.
“We decided that if we miss this opportunity, it will be too late,” he said while waiting at Helsinki-Vantaa.
Many Russians leaving the country belong to a sector of society that has long criticized Putin. At home, many others continue to support the president, in part because of intensified propaganda activities in recent years in the Russian state media. Mr Putin has justified the war against Ukraine by the need to “denature” its government, falsely claiming that Kiev is under the control of an American-backed neo-Nazi conspiracy.
Maxim Kuvykin, 54, said he saw in recent days all over Moscow the letter “Z”, which the Russian government has used as a patriotic symbol to entice Russians around Ukraine to attack.
People around him were “brainwashed” gradually, including his mother, who died shortly before the start of the war, Kuvykin said while waiting a day at Helsinki-Vantaa. After his mother’s funeral, he decided to settle in Israel, where he has a passport because of his Jew. “My mother read all the books in the world. But in the last five years, he watched a lot of television. Propaganda really works, ”Kuvykin said in tears.
“I knew for many years that Mr. Putin would be shocked and attacked a neighbor,” he added. “Now I’m running away. I just don’t want to be a part of it.”
Even if they settle in European countries, many Russians will still suffer the effects of sanctions.
Visa Inc.
and
Mastercard Inc.
said on Saturday it would suspend operations in Russia, rendering their credit card useless outside the country. Visa and Mastercard representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The transfer of card companies is likely to hurt mostly ordinary Russians by suffocating their assets as they leave the country, not in place of Putin or the enriched oligarchs of his reign.
On the Finnish border, some remained defiant. Dasha Kirillova, a 55-year-old horse club owner whose husband set up a street art museum in St. Petersburg, said she had a bag of cash in her bag that she would transfer to Ukrainian artists upon arrival in Dubai. he was going to visit his daughter. He planned to return soon to pick up his horse.
“But if we have North Korean conditions in our country, of course we’ll leave. I’ll take the horses to the Caucasus,” Kirillova said.
“Putin is crazy,” he said. “The scariest thing about me is that a lot of people support him.”
Nathan Kalt, a 36-year-old IT worker from Moscow, flew to Armenia after the war broke out, but planned to move to neighboring Georgia, where he has friends. He does not expect to return to Russia soon for fear that his opposition to Mr Putin and the war will put him in trouble.
“I am worried that the Gulag will come back,” Mr Kalt said of Yerevan, where he was staying in a hotel full of Russian families.
Others expressed deep shame at what Putin did in the name of his nation.
“It’s a horror I’ve never experienced before in my life,” said a woman waiting to fly at Helsinki Airport. “I don’t know how I can look the world in the eye.”
Write Sune Engel Rasmussen at [email protected] and Alexander Osipovich at [email protected]
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