A whole generation of Russia’s creative talent has fled
As I queued at a cash machine with another dozen disoriented Russians in Tbilisi, Georgia, a local man stopped, whistled at us, and shouted: “Russian warship, go f--yourself! Russians, go f--- yourselves!”
We immediately recognised the warship quote, first spoken by a group of Ukrainian guards as they refused to surrender an island on the first day of the invasion, and which has since become a rallying cry against Moscow.
In the past two weeks, more than 1.5million Ukrainians have escaped to central Europe and further afield. But tens of thousands of Russians – most of them well-educated, urban and with an international outlook – have also fled Vladimir Putin’s regime and what appears to be an imminent new Iron Curtain. Yerevan in Armenia, Bukhara in Uzbekistan or Istanbul in Turkey – the destination is not important. While some locals are less than welcoming to the new arrivals, many Russians, myself included, felt we had no choice but to go.
An avalanche of sanctions threatens to plunge millions into poverty and make Russia a pariah on par with North Korea. A draconian new law that means anyone who contradicts the official Kremlin line on the conflict can face 15 years in jail has led to an exodus of journalists. Persistent rumours about the impending introduction of martial law, which could lead to conscription, has made escape even more pressing for men of fighting age. Within days from the start of the conflict, all the plane tickets out of the country had been snapped up, as the West moved to close its airspace to Russian airlines. Some Russians made the journey across the border on foot.
I was luckier, and managed to fly to Tbilisi, with an overnight stop in Istanbul. In Turkey, I went to meet a local friend at a bar in a 19th-century palazzo, where I immediately bumped into two Moscow acquaintances. They work, or used to work, at two of Moscow’s best-known cultural institutions. The glitzy headquarters of both organisations still stand in the capital, but all of their operations have been suspended. Russia has become too toxic to play any role in international culture.
Both of my friends, Western-educated men in their 30s, spoke of experiencing paralysing fear when clearing passport control in Moscow: a number of travellers have been questioned by border guards and asked to unlock their phones. Both men had deleted their chats and any applications that might have marked them out as opposition-minded. One of them installed an app for the Kremlin news outlet RT as a decoy.
“Anything you say is a treason in Russia right now,” one of the men said.
The Russia we know no longer insists. Putin’s war-era Russia has no time for designers, artists and IT developers – or anyone else with a global outlook. The talk on the streets of Istanbul and Tbilisi is all about where to go, where to settle. The influx of educated Russians desperate to escape has drawn comparison to the exodus of White Russian émigrés who fled from the Bolsheviks after the civil war, more than a century ago. The White Russians – named after the anti-bolshevik White Army and counting among their members the novelist Vladimir Nabokov and composer Igor Stravinsky – settled across the globe, leaving behind lasting cultural heritage.
As we sat in that Istanbul club, talking about the ins and outs of getting a residence permit in Turkey, a tall man in a baseball cap and swanky glasses walked into the room. It was Kirill Serebrennikov, Russia’s most sought-after film and theatre director. The new émigrés that I met in Istanbul and Tbilisi were overwhelmingly in their 30s and 40s, with transferable skills, whether these be in technology or film.
At least 25,000 Russians travelled to Georgia last week alone, Levan Davitashvili, a Georgian government minister, said yesterday. His country was open to this new skilled labour, he said.
Tbilisi’s hotels and guest houses are fully booked, and Russian speakers outnumber locals at many cafés and shops. As I went down for breakfast at my hotel in Tbilisi on Sunday morning, I saw a room full of Russians: young, polite couples with their dogs and children, all looking confused and sad. One floor up you could hear a woman crying out at the top of her voice, cursing Mr Putin.
At the weekend, Visa and Mastercard announced they were suspending operations for Russia. But in a cruel twist, it turned out that the ban will only affect those using Russian-issued cards outside the country. The 72 per cent of Russians who never travel abroad – incidentally, roughly the same proportion of Russians that support Putin – will not be affected.
Those who have fled or want to visit the West will be punished.
In the queue where we were told to “go f---” ourselves in Tbilisi, we were desperately trying to withdraw dollars before our bank cards turned into useless pieces of plastic.
Yesterday they did, turning professionals into paupers overnight – if only, it is hoped, temporarily. I, for one, had to face the wrath of a taxi driver who could not get his £1.50 ride fare from my Russian account, because it had been blocked as I was in his car.
My countrymen in Georgia whispered about a major bank that was asking new Russian clients to sign a form stating that they opposed the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine, as well as Moscow’s occupation of Georgia’s breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
A central branch of that bank was besieged by anxious Russian men and women filling in the forms as soon as it opened on Monday morning.
‘Anything you say is a treason in Russia right now,’ one of my friends said