\n\n“While the exodus of about 2.7 million Ukrainians from their war-torn country has focused the world on a burgeoning humanitarian crisis, the descent of Russia into new depths of authoritarianism has many Russians despairing of their future. That has created a flight \u2014 though much smaller than in Ukraine”
…
“Some who have fled are bloggers, journalists or activists who feared arrest under Russia\u2019s draconian new law criminalizing what the state deems \u201cfalse information\u201d about the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others are musicians and artists who see no future for their crafts in Russia. And there are workers in tech, law and other industries who saw the prospect of comfortable, middle-class lives \u2014 let alone any possibility for moral acceptance of their government \u2014 dissipate overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They left behind jobs and family and money stuck in Russian bank accounts that they can no longer access. They fear being tarred as Russians abroad as the West isolates the country for its deadly invasion, and they reel over the loss of a positive Russian identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t just take away our future,\u201d Polina Borodina, a Moscow playwright, said of her government\u2019s war in Ukraine. \u201cThey took away our past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The speed and scale of the flight reflect the tectonic shift the invasion touched off inside Russia. For all of President Vladimir Putin\u2019s repression, Russia until last month remained a place with extensive travel connections to the rest of the world, a mostly uncensored internet giving a platform to independent media, a thriving tech industry and a world-class arts scene. Slices of Western middle-class life \u2014 Ikea, Starbucks, affordable foreign cars \u2014 were widely available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when they woke up Feb. 24, many Russians knew that all that was over. Dmitry Aleshkovsky, a journalist who spent years promoting Russia\u2019s emerging culture of charitable giving, got in his car the next day and drove to Latvia.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n