Russia's 2022 anti-war exodus : the attitudes and expectations of Russian migrants

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled their homeland after their government launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. It has been the largest brain drain from Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The outflow of qualified labor and educated people will lead to the loss of human capital and knowledge, affect the states and societies to which they go, and influence the Russian political landscape at home. This memo analyzes the potential long-term effects of the anti-war migration wave in the post-Soviet space and Europe, which has accepted the lion’s share of Russian migrants. Our review relies on a variety of data that allows for a systematic comparison of migrants’ trajectories, their impact on the host state’s domestic political landscape, and their ties with Russia. Russian migrants tend to be young, competent professionals but deal with isolation, lack of resources and prospects, enduring coronavirus restrictions, and the Kremlin’s stigmatization of “bad vs. good Russians.” However, whereas Russian communities abroad were once fertile ground for instrumentalization as pro-Kremlin soft power tools, the current wave has fragmented alignments with those communities, allowing for, conversely, alternate images of Russia to expand from the diaspora.