Miltos Sakellaris
Nana Grinstein left Russia because of new Kremlin laws – which punish criticism of the so-called “special company in Ukraine“- they can take her to jail. He has been a playwright for several years. Victor’s husband and her 14-year-old daughter Tonia left the country with her.
They left behind the … frenzy that prevailed in Russia and the persecution of anyone who dares to say that the “special operation” is, in fact, a war.
«The world we have been building for years, which seemed unshakable, important and up-to-date, collapsed before my eyes as if it were made of cardboard.“Greenstein told Al Jazeera from a rented apartment in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
He arrived there in early March and found the following: Hundreds of thousands of other Russians had traveled before them, and since then they have seen more and more arriving.
Greenstein and her family fled Russia for fear of persecution for being “scum” and “national traitors” – insults that have sparked a “witch hunt” reminiscent of the Stalin-era purges.
These terms have been used recently, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by the Russian president himself. The Greins are now among at least 200,000 Russians who have fled their homes and jobs because they say they are disgusted by the Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine.
“They do not want to have anything to do with Putin’s imperial plan and they do not want to be associated with his war crimes,” wrote columnist Leonid Bershinsky in mid-March. “In which Western sanctions have condemned Russia,” he wrote.
The post-invasion flight from Russia is the latest chapter in the flight of millions who cannot stand living under Putin’s rule.
Since 2000, when Russia was first elected president, by 2020, four to five million Russians have emigrated, according to a survey published by Takie Dela magazine in October.
The figures were based on surveys, official national data from dozens of countries – from Kazakhstan to Canada – as well as Russian statistics on the number of people who had canceled their residence permits. “The Russians emigrated mainly to Europe and North America, but after 2014 more moved to the former Soviet republics,” the same magazine reported.
The new wave of Russian immigrants is huge – and growing.
At least 200,000 people fled Russia in the first 10 days of the war in Ukraine, according to estimates by Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born economist at the University of Chicago.
“It is the tragic exit that Russia has had to see for a century,” Sonin wrote in a tweet, comparing the continuing exodus to the “White Immigration” that followed the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, when some five million people fled. Former Russian Empire – ending up in Germany. , France, United States, Argentina and China.
Among the immigrants were novelist Vladimir Nabokov, composer Igor Stravinsky and Ukrainian-born helicopter designer Igor Sikorsky.
Today, migration is faster and much easier, especially for “digital nomads” who can live almost anywhere, as long as there is access to the internet and e-banking.
A mid-March survey of more than 2,000 migrants by OK Russians, a fledgling nonprofit that helps migrants, found that about a third of those who left were IT professionals, clerks and other freelance designers. , bloggers and journalists.
The investigation concluded that at least 300,000 Russians had fled the country by March 16, mainly to Georgia, Turkey and Armenia.
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